


Everything on Earth

by vaarchie



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Archie and Veronica are literally in love why am i writing a slow burn bye, BACK AT IT AGAIN, Enthusiastic Consent, Eventual Smut, F/M, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, Minor Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones, Mutual Pining, Rating will change, Slow Burn, archie andrews is a drama queen, college graduates, maybe i enjoyed ap lit a little too much, reggie mantle is a drama queen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-06-20 00:55:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 66,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15522522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaarchie/pseuds/vaarchie
Summary: It's been four years since Archie and Veronica broke up, and they're each leading lives to which the other has no point of entry -- until one summer pushes them back together, and the separate worlds they've built up start to merge in ways they never could have expected.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! There will be more notes at the end of this chapter, but I just wanted to let you know right away that there's some reggieronnie at the beginning of this chapter that's important to the plot, but you'll see archieronnie by the end of the chapter -- and this is an ARCHIERONNIE fic! I hope you enjoy!

_“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”_

― **F. Scott Fitzgerald** , **The Great Gatsby**

 

* * *

 

Ethel Muggs graffitis the Pembrooke the first night Veronica is back in Riverdale, and that's how she knows everyone still remembers everything.

 

 _‘Fucking bitch_ ,’ the Pembrooke boasts, the words spray painted in shocking red so no one can overlook them.

 

“Quite the welcome wagon,” Reggie says, coming outside to stand on the front walk beside her and take in the offensive paint dripping down the sides of the fancy penthouse. There are drops on the grass below. There are spray cans in the bushes. It's just past nine in the morning, and the air smells like chemicals in the early summer sun. Reggie is wearing a fluffy white bathrobe and squinting up at the damage. “They must have spent a fortune to get all that paint. Aren't they, like, ten bucks a can?”

  
  
“Can you not?” Veronica's heart is in her throat. She’d forgotten this, or tried to, what it was like before she bolted out of here four years ago: Ethel’s reign of holy terror, designed with brutal precision to bring Veronica to punishment for all her various capital crimes. Her hands are clammy and she thinks she might puke. She glances over her shoulder at the quiet street beyond the sidewalk, half expecting to see Ethel cruising by, admiring her good work. “I need the hose.”

  
  
“It’s whatever. Just leave it.” Reggie, of course, is completely unbothered, the shrug of his shoulders intended to let her know she's overreacting. Nothing is a big deal when it comes to him: his house could get tagged every day of his life, his house itself could crumble to ashes, and it would turn into _eh,_ not a big deal. “We can call Trent to come clean it up later.”

  
  
“Are you kidding?” Veronica says in a voice like he's out of his mind. Her face feels red and hot, and all she wants to do is make herself as small as possible, but there’s no way she's letting her parents' handyman spray someone's blunt poetic message off the front of the Pembrooke just because everyone in this town thinks she's a criminal and wants to remind her. “I said I need the _hose_ , Reggie.”

 

“Then go _find_ it, Veronica,” he says, mimicking her tone exactly. “Don’t blame me; I’m not the one who did this to you.”

  
  
She turns on him then, standing on the sidewalk in this town she never planned to come back to, not in a million years. “Who would you like me to blame, then?” she demands. For a second she lets herself remember it, the cold, sick feeling of seeing the flyers for the first time in May of senior year, along with the grossest, juiciest information Reggie could glean on Veronica and her family. _The Lodges_ , it boasted, _and All Their Secrets._ The knowing in her heart and stomach and bones that now everyone else would know, too. “Who?”

  
  
For a second Reggie looks completely exhausted, older than she's ever thought of him being. When the two of them had ended up at NYU together, things felt different. She'd needed time to move on from her proverbial former relationship with Archie Andrews, but when she was finally able to lock those feelings away in a dark, tiny closet, she let herself accept Reggie's apologies, and then his offer for dinner. He sighs and then he blinks, and it’s gone. “Veronica--”

  
  
“Look, don’t.” She holds up a hand to stop him, wanting so badly not to talk about it. To be back at NYU, to be anywhere other than here. One summer between now and the first day of her new job in New York, she reminds herself, trying to take a deep breath and not give in to the overwhelming urge to run for the nearest airport -- but Betty asked her to come back and see her, to rekindle the best parts of their old lives, and Veronica would do anything for Betty. One summer. Then she and Reggie can focus on planning their wedding somewhere far, far away from here and never come back to Riverdale ever again.

  
  
Reggie stands on the steps and looks at her: _I'm going to make your family pay_. He’d said that four years ago, he'd told her exactly what was going to happen, so really there’s no reason to still be so mystified after all this time that he dug up the worst, most secret, most important things in her life -- and he wrote an exposé about them. She's struck suddenly, and not for the first time, by the painfully true realization that that was the moment her relationship with Archie Andrews was finally doomed. No going back, not then and not ever. She pushes the thought away. Wonders if thinking about the first boy she ever loved will ever stop making her feel sad.

  
  
“I think the hose is around back,” Reggie says finally.

  
  
“Thank you.” She swallows down the lump in her throat and heads for the back gates of the Pembrooke, ignoring the panicky sweat she can feel gathering at the top of her spine. She waits until she's hidden in the blue-gray shade of the building before she lets herself slide down the wall and press the heels of her hands into her eyes.

 

* * *

 

Betty doesn't get into town until tonight, so Veronica spends the next few hours hiding up in her old bedroom with the blinds shut tight, eating strawberries and reading books, licking her wounds like a hurt animal while Reggie is out. He'd gotten dressed rapidly after Veronica had finished hosing down the building, throwing on a blue button down and leaving in a whirlwind, calling back to her that he was off to visit his mom and maybe pick up some old home videos from her for Veronica to see.

 

Veronica's own parents are gone for the Summer -- Cabo -- but they ever so graciously handed the Pembrooke off to their shining responsible NYU graduate of a daughter for the next three months. Everything up here is the same as Veronica left it: wall color, rug, the duvet on the bed. The heart shaped locket Archie got her the Christmas of their sophomore year, right next to a bulletin board holding her old cheer competition schedule and a photo of her at Pop's with Betty and Archie and Jughead, her mouth wide open mid-laugh. Even her journal is still sitting on the dresser, the one she forgot to take with her in her mad dash out of Riverdale after high school graduation, like it was just waiting for her to come crawling all the way back here with a whole cache of wrongdoings to spill out on paper.

  
  
It’s the photo she keeps catching herself looking at, though, like it's a magnet and she's the metal, drawing her attention from clear across the room. Finally, she pushes herself out of bed and pulls it down to examine more closely: It’s from the summer after sophomore year, back when she and Archie were dating. It was the first and only time Jughead had ever met Betty and Archie -- he was Veronica's friend for years before that, back when she used to share her lunch with him in middle school before he transferred to the Southside district for high school and she headed for Riverdale High. Betty had fled Riverdale mere days after the photo was taken, and Jughead didn't spend any time with Veronica and Archie after that. In the picture, though, the four of them are sitting sprawled in an old booth at the diner, she and the three people she’d loved most, Betty with a milkshake saying something, smiling, and Archie with his arm hooked tight around Veronica's waist. It was almost a year after Fred Andrews was killed in cold blood in the Black Hood attacks in that very diner, but Archie insisted he wanted to go anyway, that he was okay. Jughead's looking right at Betty, although Veronica never actually noticed that until now. Just holding the stupid picture feels like a knife to the gut.

  
  
Archie's not even home this summer, she knows because she and Reggie drove by the house he'd inherited after his dad's death on the way to the Pembrooke yesterday evening and the driveway was empty, shutters closed tight. There’s no chance of even bumping into him around town.

  
  
Probably there’s no good reason to feel so disappointed about that.

  
  
She throws the photo facedown on the desktop and climbs back under the blankets. When she was fifteen, living up here made her feel like a princess, tucked on the top floor of her mom’s old penthouse. Now, barely a week after college graduation, it makes her feel like one again -- trapped in a stone tower, with no place in the whole wide world to go.

 

* * *

 

When Betty texted Veronica a few weeks ago, she'd said she was staring down her summer-long sentence in Riverdale, and the idea of seeing Veronica again was the only thing that made it feel at all bearable.

 

Veronica did stick by Betty pretty hard at the end of sophomore year when everyone found out her dad was the Black Hood, sitting beside her in the cafeteria at school even as everyone else at their lunch table mysteriously disappeared and the whispers turned into something way, way worse. Still, the truth is Betty didn’t exactly give Veronica a heads-up before she left Riverdale to finish her last two years of high school at an all-girls boarding school plunked in the middle of the desert outside Phoenix, Arizona.  


Decamped under the cover of darkness, more like.

 

Veronica's just worried their reunion might be a little… _awkward._

  
  
But she's been back in Riverdale for almost a full day and the only person she's seen is Reggie, her fiance, who she sees all the time anyway, world without end. So she slips her heels back on and takes her Porsche into Riverdale proper.

  
  
It’s warm enough to open the windows, and even through the maple and pine trees lining the roads she can smell the earthy scent of Sweetwater River as she heads for downtown: Main Street is small and compact, all coffee shops and dingy grocery stores, a skating rink that hasn’t been open for roughly forty years. That’s also about the last time this place was a destination, as far as Veronica's ever been able to tell -- the riverfront plus the endless green stretch of the forest was a big vacation spot in the sixties and seventies, but ever since she can remember Riverdale has had the air of something that used to be but isn’t anymore, like you fell into a time machine by mistake.

 

She gets out to pump gas, pointedly ignoring the huge LOCAL AUTHOR! display in the window of Riverdale’s one tiny bookstore across the street -- a million paperback copies of Jughead Jones’ bestseller _Riverdale_ available for the low, low price of $6.99 plus Veronica's dignity. She's devoting so much attention to ignoring it, in fact, that she doesn't notice who's coming up behind her.

 

She's just fitting her credit card into the pump when a hand lands square on her shoulder. “Get out of here!” a voice says. She whirls around, heart pounding and ready to fight, before she realizes it’s an exclamation and not an order.

  
  
Before she realizes it’s coming from Jughead himself.

  
  
“You’re home too?” he asks disbelievingly, his face breaking into a big smile. He’s wearing his old beanie and he looks happier to see her than anyone has since she got here.

  
  
He gets his arms around her and hugs her. He smells like bar soap and wind.

  
  
“I am,” she says. “Wow. Hi.”

  
  
Jug keeps smiling, even if he does look a little taken aback by the sight of her. “Hey,” he says. “So, you know, welcome back, how have you been, I assume you’re enjoying your return to the warm bosom of Riverdale.”

  
  
“Uh-huh.” She still feels a little shocked at how happy he seems to be that she's here -- God, she didn’t realize she was so hard up for a friendly face. Or, okay, she did, but she didn’t think she'd be quite so surprised at the sight of one. “It’s been great.” She pulls her credit card out. “For example, Ethel Muggs spray painted the words _fucking bitch_ on my house last night.”

  
  
Jughead raises his eyebrows, then nods. “Weird,” he says, calm as the surface of the river in the middle of the night. “She did the same thing to my place this morning.”

  
  
Veronica's eyes widen. “Really?”

  
  
“No,” Jughead says, grinning when she makes a face. Then his eyes go dark. “Seriously, though, are you okay? That’s, like, pretty illegal and horrifying of her, actually.”

 

Veronica sighs and rolls her eyes -- at herself or at the situation, at the utter absurdity of it all. “It’s -- whatever,” she tells him, trying to sound okay and above it. “I’m fine. It is what it is.”

  
“It feels ridiculous, though, right?” Jughead says. “I mean, it was over _four years ago_ , and none of the stuff on those flyers was even anything you did. It was all your parents. You'd think people would learn to move on by now.”

  
  
She laughs. She can’t help it. She and Jughead never talked about it once after it happened, when Reggie released his exposé and the world came crashing down around her feet. Could be enough time has passed that it doesn’t feel like a big deal to him anymore, although apparently he’s the only one. God knows it still feels like a big deal to Veronica. “You’re definitely right,” she agrees, then watches as he balls up his receipt from inside the store and tosses it over his shoulder, missing the trash can next to the pump by a distance of roughly nine feet. “That’s littering,” she tells him, smirking a little.

  
  
“Add it to the list of horrifying crimes,” Jughead says, apparently unconcerned about this or any other lapses in good citizenship. He ran the school newspaper in the Southside back in high school. Betty ran the one at Riverdale High. She thinks the two of them might have gotten along, if Betty hadn't left; she'd always liked running, had been on the track team, but her run to Arizona was the fastest and furthest of her life. “Look, people are assholes. Ethel's an asshole. And the people we used to go to school with--” He breaks off, shrugging. His hair down over his ears, dark and black. “Well, the people we cared about were different, but anyway, they're not here. What are you doing, are you working, what?”

  
“Nothing yet,” Veronica admits, feeling suddenly embarrassed that she hasn't gone out, that there’s pretty much nobody here who wants to speak to her. Reggie’s had a million friends as long as she's known him. “Reggie and I are engaged. My friend asked us to come down and spend the summer with her. I don't know if you remember her -- Betty Cooper?”

 

Jughead nods slowly at that, like he's turning the name over carefully in his head. “Betty Cooper,” he says then, and smiles. “Yeah. I remember her. You had a boyfriend that was always with you too, right?”

 

The mention of Archie stings, but Veronica doesn't let it linger. “Yeah,” she says, quick and antiseptic. “But like you said. He's not here. So.”

 

If Jughead notices the change in her tone, he doesn't comment on it, and she's grateful for that. “Does Betty live over toward Josie McCoy’s house?” he asks instead.

 

Veronica shakes her head, curious.

 

“Oh,” Jughead scratches at his head. “I actually saw Reggie on my drive over here, and he was headed in that direction. Just thought maybe he was going to see Betty, after you said that.”

 

She's not quite sure how to feel about that -- Reggie is supposed to be visiting his mom, but she doesn't live on that side of town, either. She doesn't let herself grow too uncomfortable before Jughead starts talking again. “Are the three of you going to be free tomorrow?”

  
  
Veronica remembers once, when she eleven or twelve, that she tripped over a log down by Sweetwater River and twisted her ankle, and Jughead carried her all the way home piggyback. It makes her feel a little sad that their friendship was kind of halted once high school came. “I don’t know,” she says. Maybe she's crazy, but running into Jug makes her feel like something’s about to happen, a bend in a dusty road. “Probably. Why?”

  
  
Jughead grins at her like someone who suspects she needs a little anticipation in her life and wants to deliver. “My place is down on Sweetwater River. We should all have a get together tomorrow evening. Bring Reggie,” he says, and starts to walk away. Then, over his shoulder; “And Betty Cooper, too.”

* * *

 

Veronica pulls up in front of Pop's the next afternoon, the red glow of the lights the same as she remembers them. She opens the door to the smell of freshly ground coffee beans and the sound of some moody singer on the radio. The diner is mostly empty, a late-afternoon lull. Betty's sitting at the counter, golden-white hair hanging in her eyes, and when she looks up at the jangle of the bells, joy flashes across her pretty face in the moment she sees Veronica.

  
  
“Oh my God,” she says once she’s recovered, hopping off her stool and hugging her fast and tight, then holding her back at arm’s length like a great-aunt having a look at how much she's grown. “You’re here!”

  
  
“I am,” Veronica agrees, smiling. Even if she never wanted to come back here, she's glad she did, if only to see her best friend again. They'd never stopped speaking to each other through phone calls and texts and social media, and they'd even seen each other since Betty left for Arizona back before junior year -- the summer before senior year, and then once the day Veronica went to see her at one of her track competitions in college -- but this feels different, the two of them fresh and young and new, but also older and smarter. Betty’s wearing a pink sundress and a thin silver necklace, a splotch of deep blue on the side of her hand like she was up late writing in pen-and-ink like she’s been doing since she was a little kid. Every year on her birthday Veronica buys her new running shoes and a fresh set of pens, the fancy kind from the New York supply stores. The past four years she went online and had them shipped. “How have you been? Tell me everything about your life. Don't leave anything out.”

 

Betty, as it turns out, has taken her devotion to the sport of running to a sky-high level: she's training for the Olympics come fall. She plans on running every morning during the summer, too. She's not dating anyone. She graduated from FSU last week and has this glow about her like maybe the Sunshine State is inside her now, citrus and rays of light under her skin.

 

Veronica tells her about her degree in Business and how Reggie proposed -- they were at the top of the Empire State building in the chill of an early spring evening, and the lights of the city were stretching out in every direction below them. It was beautiful. And Veronica said yes. She almost tells Betty about this nagging feeling she has inside like something about her relationship with Reggie isn't quite right, but in the end she just keeps her mouth shut, like maybe keeping it in her head will mean it's not real, though she knows there was a time when she and Betty told each other everything.

 

They drink four milkshakes between them.

 

Reggie's right on time to pick them up to go to Jughead’s an hour later, two quick taps on the horn of his Ferrari to let them know he’s outside. They hurry out of the diner, the noisy clack of their shoes on the floor, their hair long and loose and flying behind them, light and dark. The air outside is clean and cool, pine scented and green, and for a moment the two of them are fifteen again, blissful in the light of the unknown future they were basking in. It feels like not a second has passed since they were happy here.

 

Veronica slides into the front seat and leans over to kiss Reggie just quickly, buckling her seatbelt as he and Betty shout their jubious hellos. They start driving down the long winding roads toward Sweetwater Circle, windows rolled down all the way and wind blowing tears into their eyes. Reggie revs the engine and _speeds_ , making the girls scream gleefully, and for a bright flashing moment Veronica thinks they could be happy here again, that _she_ could be happy, spending her life with Reggie in the green town of their childhoods.

 

Then they pull into the Sweetwater community -- a cluster of mostly _gigantic_ houses, bigger than the Pembrooke, nestled right along the river bank. Jughead's house is smaller, hidden behind a canopy of trees and sitting right next door to an enormous and gorgeous mansion. He's standing outside to greet them when they pull up.

 

He hugs Veronica again when she gets out, shakes Reggie's hand.

 

“You wrote a story, or something, right? Pretty cool, dude,” Reggie says. “Sorry for trying to beat you up that one time back in school.”

 

“No hard feelings,” Jughead promises, then finally turns to look at Betty. “Hi,” he says kindly, “Long time no see.”

 

Betty smiles like the start of June, full of promise. “That’s for sure,” she says, and for a second they just look at each other before Betty reaches her hand out, and Jughead holds it for a moment before letting go.

 

They all head inside.

 

The house is charming, and Jughead and Betty and Reggie chat in the living room while Veronica claims a headache and says she needs some fresh air, heading out through the big glass doors and out onto the wooden deck. The river flows down below her feet, a soothing sound.

 

Veronica stands there on Jughead’s back porch and gazes out at the water. She and Archie used to come out here a lot -- when it was warm in the summers like this, but also in the winters, the watery muck freezing over and the snow laden branches of the maple trees along the banks. He was wearing a bright red sweater one day in December of their senior year, and Veronica remembers watching him, the sight of him stark and beautiful against the solid white snow stretching out in every direction, the sunlight behind the gray clouds like an infinite halo above him. She used to watch him all the time. Even after they'd been dating for two years, she was enamored by him, and everything still felt new and exciting and secret, like nobody had ever lived it before them.

  
  
“Reggie told me he and Josie went skinny-dipping out here in the fall,” Archie had told her quietly once, his hand reaching out toward her.

  
  
She held his hand in both of hers, his fingers warm between them. “Really?” she asked, then wrinkled her nose. “Is the river clean enough for that?”

  
  
“Probably not.” Archie grinned at her, squeezing her hand as they followed the frozen curve of the river. “We should try it, though.”

  
  
“What?” she asked blankly. Then: “Skinny-dipping?” she glanced down at the crunchy ice covering the ground, then back at him. “We should, huh?”

  
  
“Well, not now,” Archie clarified, smiling. “But when it gets warmer, yeah. I think we should.”

  
  
Veronica looked over at him, intrigued and curious; a shiver ran through her, anticipation in the pit of her stomach. “This summer,” she agreed, and pushed up onto her toes to kiss him in the cold white light.

  
Archie caught her face between two hands. “Love you,” he said quietly, and she smiled.

  
  
“Love you too.”

  
  
The memory knocks the wind out of her. The sun is setting out over the trees and the next door neighbor's house is lit up like the Fourth of July, cars starting to pile into the driveway and music bumping through the open windows, speakers out on the deck and the balconies. Veronica heads inside.

 

“I don't know what it is with the neighbor,” Jughead is saying when she returns, “but he throws these ragers, like, every single night. You'd think he'd wanna take a break for once, but nope.”

 

Betty laughs at that. “Can't you ask him what's up? Maybe see if he plans on stopping anytime soon?”

 

Jughead shrugs. “I would, but I've never even seen the guy. Oh well,” he brushes the conversation away. “I don't really mind all that much. It makes living out here seem less… I don't know. Isolating.”

 

“I never asked,” Veronica says then, “why are _you_ back in Riverdale? You're a famous author now, you could live pretty much anywhere, but is this your home base?”

 

Jughead stares out the glass doors leading to his small deck. “I came back to help out with the Southside,” he says eventually. “I know the book has been successful, but it's like -- I don't want to forget where I came from, you know? I always told myself, if I was ever in a position to make things better for them, I would. So that's what I'm doing.”

 

Veronica nods slowly. That's something to admire. Betty is staring at him like maybe he's magic.

 

They all wander back out onto the deck eventually, cold drinks in their hands, blissful. The sun is gone now, sky all clear and inky above them, stars beginning to appear. Reggie and Veronica sit close, her smooth bare legs pulled up to her chest on one of the lounge chairs and his head tilted back, eyes shut. He has one hand on Veronica's knee, thumb stroking over her skin, so she knows he's not asleep.

 

It's peaceful here with him, with Betty and Jughead leaning against the railing together and staring out at the dark noisy river a few feet away, chatting quietly; but still there's that succinct, nagging feeling like she's trying to force something here, like the two of them are playing house and soon enough this perfect bubble is going to shatter and she'll go back to her real life where Reggie isn't a part of it.

 

“How's your mom?” she asks quietly, feeling guilty over her own thoughts. She just needs to reconnect with him. She _loves_ him. Doesn't she?

 

“Hmm?” Reggie hums noncommittally, slitting his eyes open to look at her. “Oh. She's good.”

 

“Did you get the home videos?”

 

“What?” Reggie looks confused for a second, then, “ _Oh_. Ah, um, no. She didn't have them. But she sends her love and said she wants us to have breakfast with her soon.” He says it quickly before he turns away from her, closing his eyes again.

 

Veronica remembers what Jughead told her yesterday, about how Reggie was hanging around somewhere far from his mother's house. She doesn't want to follow this train of thought to its end. Already she feels sick.

 

Next door, the neighbor is lighting off fireworks, and the hundreds of party guests are cheering. She turns her head to see.

 

“You guys wanna head over there and check it out?” Jughead asks, and Veronica quirks an eyebrow.

 

Reggie looks game, sitting up and peering over toward the mansion. There's a bonfire on the shore of the river, tons of people gathered around it. There's a short dock stretching out into the water. Betty nods, and eventually, so does Veronica.

 

So that's exactly what the four of them do; put their sweaters on and trot on over to crash the neighbor's insane party. They don't try to get into the house, instead opting to head right down toward the bonfire. The air has that night-water smell about it, murky and mysterious.

 

Some of the faces here are familiar, and pretty soon people start to notice them, one after another calling Reggie's name, everyone wanting his attention. Other people who Veronica recognizes only by face shoot her nasty looks -- you don't have to know her to hate her in this town.

 

Reggie stops with a hand on Veronica's back and grins down at her, motions to where two random guys are splashing around in the river like a couple of lunatics. “What do you say, V?” he asks, raising his eyebrows. He’s had a couple more drinks than her. He looks as mischievous as a little kid. “You wanna get in?”

  
  
“Uh, no,” she tells him, smirking. “I’ll pass, thanks.”

  
  
Reggie nods. “You sure?” he asks, teasing, inching closer. “You need some help getting there, maybe?”

  
  
Oh, there’s no way. “Don’t you dare,” Veronica manages, taking a step backward, laughing a little. It’s been a long time since Reggie flirted with her.

  
  
“Sorry, what’s that?” he asks. “I couldn’t hear you. It sounded like you were saying you wanted me to pick you up and throw you off the dock.”

  
  
“I’ll murder you,” she warns him, just as Betty says, “Uh-oh!” and then Reggie’s just doing it, scooping her up and tossing her over his shoulder like she doesn’t weigh anything at all. “A violent death!” she promises, but the truth is she can hardly get the words out with how hard she's laughing. She smells smoke from the bonfire and the clean cotton of Reggie’s T-shirt as he strides toward the dock. The other guys are hooting at them from the river, somebody clapping. Everyone’s looking, Veronica's sure of it. The weird thing is, in this moment she doesn’t even mind. “Lots of pain!”

  
  
“Sorry, what’s that?” Reggie asks. “I still can’t hear you.”

  
  
“With a hammer!” she declares, pounding her fists on his back. She doesn’t actually think he’s going to do it, but she's about to grip onto him anyway when he stops super abruptly and puts her on her feet all at once.

  
  
“The hammer scared you off, huh?” she says, out of breath from giggling, her hair all crazy and messy and hanging in her face. When she lifts her head to look at him, though, Reggie isn’t laughing back. She follows his gaze and that’s the moment she spies Josie McCoy watching them in the light of the bonfire, orange sparks flying through the air.

  
  
And Archie -- _Veronica's_ Archie -- is by her side.

  
  
For a minute the four of them all just stare at each other across the sandy, scrubby distance, Archie's golden-brown eyes locked on Veronica's from yards and yards away. He looks different than he did last time she saw him, like experience has changed him in some way. There’s a livid purple bruise across one sharp cheek. She opens her mouth and then closes it again, feeling like she left her heart on the side of the road somewhere, blood-red and beating. Her chest has closed up like a fist.

  
  
Reggie looks from Veronica to Archie to Josie and back again, shakes his head ever so slightly. “Josie--” is all he says, then fails to follow it up.

  
From the look on Archie's face before he finally turns away you’d think he was seeing something truly disgusting, a rotting corpse or human vomit.

  
  
Or Veronica.

  
  
The instinct to run is physical, as if some kind of rabid animal is snapping at her heels; she makes for the car as fast as she can without breaking into an all-out sprint and calling even more attention to herself. She can still hear the sounds of the party through the trees once she finally gets far enough to run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! So, here it is, my sophomore multi chapter fic. I'm so thankful for the support that my first fic Devotion received and I hope this one is just as enjoyable! This is my first time writing a slow burn. Will I be able to resist making them kiss within the first five minutes? Remains to be seen. Is starting this chapter off with Reggieronnie a good marketing strategy for getting people to read far enough to get to the Archieronnie at the end? Probably not. Do I care about any of these things? Only enough to make a disclaimer about them in the notes of this chapter.
> 
> I really hope you like this fic! Going forward, assuming Life Things don't come up, it will be updated each Sunday at 7 pm pacific time. The Great Gatsby was the original inspiration, but I'm not following its plot events too strictly -- this is definitely its own story and by no stretch of the imagination do you need to read The Great Gatsby in order to understand it. I'm very excited about this fic and I hope you'll all stick by me and that you love it!
> 
> Please remember to leave a review, and if you want to chat about anything, my tumblr is @vaarchie and I'd be more than thrilled to talk to you about this fic or anything Archieronnie related! xo


	2. Chapter 2

_“I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.”_

― **F. Scott Fitzgerald** , **The Great Gatsby**

 

* * *

  


Archie is standing up on his fourth story balcony, the highest point he can get to in his house without venturing onto the rooftop deck. The wind is relentless up here, like at any moment the entire building might blow down, like he's about to be swept away and never heard from again. On the ground far below, he can still see the burning light of the bonfire, can still hear the delighted cries of all the drunk strangers who are glad to be alive; strangers who didn't just have their nights take a sharp turn into something completely fucking terrible.

 

And, okay, in the back of his mind, maybe he did kind of hope Veronica would be home this summer. Maybe he wanted her to wander into one of his parties. Maybe he wanted her to see that he was doing just _fine_ without her, that he could have a million people around him whenever he so desired them. Wanted her to see that, yes, she left him; but that he's not alone. That she's just a footnote in his life now, practically irrelevant. That she doesn't matter anymore.

 

Then she came walking in with Reggie _fucking_ Mantle.

 

Archie squeezes the glass of scotch in his hand.

 

He has work to get done, deliveries to check on; he has a hundred things to do, a hundred ways to distract himself, but instead all he can do is think about how happy she looked as Reggie carried her toward that dock. Archie was catching up with Josie McCoy by the bonfire, talking about things he can't even recall now, but he looked up immediately when he heard Veronica's laugh, as instinctively as if she were calling his name. In the first half second he saw her, looking radiant and so happy, he felt something surge through him that made him feel dizzy and euphoric and relieved. _Oh, there you are. I’m so glad to see you._

 

Then he saw who was causing her happiness, and that all went away as quickly as it had come. Now it just burns.

 

And there was something about Veronica's sudden retreat after she locked eyes with him that throws everything else into sharp clarity, the shine wearing off and Archie's foggy head clearing enough so that he can finally see this whole night for what it is -- and what it isn’t. These parties he’s been throwing aren’t about having fun or living life to the fullest or proving to everyone else that he’s happy.

 

They’re about his half assed attempt to cover up his own searing pain, the agony that’s been surging underneath his skin since the beginning of his sophomore year when he watched his dad get shot in the middle of a diner. Since the moment the doctor came to him in the waiting room to tell him his father was dead.

 

Archie felt like he’d died, too.

 

And damn Veronica Lodge for appearing and unearthing all these memories and unwelcome realizations. And Jesus Christ, _damn_ her for looking so beautiful and washing him over with the force of the feelings he thought he buried four years ago. Damn her for being with Reggie Mantle. It feels so fucked up and _wrong_ to see her like this with him -- before things fell apart so hard with them, Archie was the one she told her secrets to. Archie was the one who made her feel safe. Archie was the one who knew her every tell and shudder.

 

Maybe it’s fitting she’ll have nothing to do with him now.

 

Another gust of wind comes blowing up to the balcony, and Archie shakes his head. He can’t do this, not again, not with her. Not when she’s the one who just _left._ He can’t let himself remember how much he loved her. He can’t. So he sets his drink down on a table inside, opens the door, and heads back downstairs, pasting the same _everything’s great_ smile on his face that he’s been using for the last four years.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Veronica and Reggie don’t speak the entire ride home from Jughead’s house. They drop Betty off at the Cooper house and Veronica stares at Archie’s childhood home nextdoor until it disappears from view. They head back to the Pembrooke and don’t say a word, like they’re both scared or embarrassed or struck down by the realization that seeing their exes stirred up unexpected feelings inside them, and they’re ashamed to admit it to each other.

 

Finally when they’re seated one of the couches Veronica takes a deep breath and says, “So.” She tucks her hair behind her ears. “That was crazy.”

 

Reggie looks up at her, his expression unreadable. “Yeah,” he agrees, just the one word, and stares back down at his hands. He fidgets with his fingers, and Veronica says nothing. “I didn’t know Andrews was back,” he adds eventually, just when she starts to think they’re both going to be gray and old by the time this conversation happens.

 

“Me neither,” she manages, then: “Josie was a surprise too.”

 

Reggie glances up, taken aback. “She comes back home every summer,” he argues, and Veronica feels something hot prickle against her skin.

 

“And how do you know that?” she asks quietly. Her engagement ring glints in the light. Her heart is beating too fast.

 

Reggie and Josie were together almost as long as she and Archie were. They used to go on double dates all the time. They used to joke that their kids would grow up together. Their split was almost as shocking and unimaginable to Veronica as her split from Archie was, but here they are, four years later and a million miles away.

 

Reggie’s eyes narrow. “Are you trying to like, insinuate something here?”

 

“No!” she exclaims, then says, “I just think it’s weird that you’re aware of her summer activities _every year,_ yet you said her name like you were shocked to see her. You said her name like you’d been caught.” She crosses her arms over her chest.

 

Reggie laughs once, mirthless, and she can see he’s ready to fight. “Oh, really?” he challenges. “Well as long as we’re talking about things that are _weird_ , care to explain why you took one look at Andrews and then ran away like _you_ were afraid of him seeing us together?”

 

“I didn’t!” Veronica says indignantly, although the truth is she kind of did -- she hated the look on Archie’s face like he was sickened and appalled. She hated the look on his face like he was hurt. She wanted to get as far away from him as quickly as possible so she wouldn’t have to see that expression anymore, so she wouldn’t want to reach out for him and tell him she’s sorry and that everything was a mistake and that she always wants to go right back in time to fix everything that broke them. She thinks of his face the night he told her he loved her. She thinks of his face the first time they ever kissed. She feels nauseated by her own thoughts and hides her face in her hands.

 

It’s a few seconds later that she feels Reggie’s hand slide up her back, warm and gentle. “Let’s just go to sleep, okay V?” he suggests, voice soft. “Seeing our exes was awkward so we reacted in ways we normally wouldn’t. It’s fine. It’s me and you.”

 

Veronica swallows. Looks at him and nods.

 

 

* * *

 

 

After three Veronica-themed nightmares, Archie wakes up the next morning with memories and regret and an instantly identifiable itch in his body. He lays there under his covers for awhile, waiting to see if it will pass. The sun spills yellow through the window. The air smells cool and river-wet. He dozes for ten minutes. He reassesses.

 

Nope. Still there.

 

Finally he gets out of bed and pulls on a pair of sweatpants, sets about untying the knots in the laces of the shoes he toed off the night before. He hasn’t done this at all since he got back to Riverdale (he’s been too busy partying and working), and he’s almost not even sure he’ll remember his old routes.

 

But he wants to run.

 

He sticks his headphones in his ears and makes for the street. He ran track in his last two years of high school, and sometimes Betty would run with him in the mornings (though admittedly she was a lot faster than him), but mostly when he came down to the river he would either run solo or bring Veronica along and walk with her. He was a serious enough runner back then, he supposes, but mostly his treks around Sweetwater River were an excuse to be alone with her. But that was four years ago, and as his feet hit the pavement of this street in this town, he feels like he’s just creaking back to life.

  


The roads are woodsy and winding here, just the occasional car rolling by. He feels his blood pumping and his muscles working as he loops a quick mile.

  


The trees are a shady canopy over his quiet street, but he’s still sweating inside his dark gray t-shirt when he makes it back to his house, the morning’s air beginning to warm. He turns down the gravel path leading to his backyard and heads out toward the grass. He can see the old Riverdale Inn in the distance, the river itself glittering at its feet.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It’s probably masochistic, taking a walk along the river like this -- but Veronica wants to do it, wants to feel the cool breeze blowing off the water and wants to breathe in the scent of  maple and pine, wants to clear her head completely. She could head to Jughead’s house -- he probably wouldn’t mind her showing up unannounced, but for some reason she doesn’t want to rush back there too quickly, not after the shock of seeing Archie two nights ago, though she knows it’s unlikely he’ll be anywhere near Jug’s neighborhood as long as there’s no party going on.

 

Instead she takes a turn on a whim, down a cobblestone path leading to the Riverdale Inn.

 

Veronica worked at the Inn for three summers back in high school, and it was majorly popular before she was born -- she used to look at old photo albums in the office full of faded pictures of people taking leaps off of the dock and into the river, vintage bathing suits and cut up orange slices. It was pretty much the only place hiring high school students for the summer other than Pop’s, so there were a lot of kids from Riverdale High who worked there with her, and it was fun in an old fashioned kind of way. Faded wallpaper and a silver bell to ding if someone needed assistance, an old elevator that hadn’t worked for as long as Veronica could remember. Archie and Betty used to visit between their own shifts at Pop’s. Even Jughead took up some duties there the summer before junior year, after the Drive-In closed down. Veronica would check guests in or man the tiny gift shop or wait tables in the small diner or teach swim classes in the pool -- she enjoyed it, truly, though her motivation to ask for all the hours she could get was mostly fueled by her desire to be away from her parents.

 

The Inn was constantly on the brink of closing down, and from the looks of it, that’s exactly what finally happened. There are no cars in the main lot, and the grass on the front lawn is overgrown and full of dandelions. The windchimes on the peeling front porch ring creepily in the breeze from the river. Veronica sees a light on inside though, so she pushes the main doors open and she’s surprised when they swing right into the lobby, just the same as she remembers, floral print furniture and the big wooden staircase. She’s about to turn right back around -- it feels spooky in here, like the doors are about to slam shut and lock behind her if she doesn’t leave, and besides, she’s probably trespassing -- when a little boy wearing a baseball cap dashes through the lobby like something out of the freaking Shining, pausing to jump on one of the sofas before disappearing like a bullet down the hallway leading to the gift shop. Veronica gasps.

 

“William! William, what did I _just_ say about running in here?” A middle aged woman wearing black jeans and a MOMA t shirt appears in the lobby, then sees Veronica standing there like a weirdo and stops short. “Oh. Hi,” she says, glancing over her shoulder toward the hallway William ran down. “Are you the new assistant?” There are springy curls around her face, and she looks stressed out.

 

Veronica feels immediately embarrassed. She should have just continued on her sad lonely river walk instead of coming in here and lurking around. Nostalgic or not, she doesn’t really have a right to be here. “No,” Veronica admits sheepishly. “I just -- used to work here, is all. I didn’t realize the Inn closed down.”

 

“Reopening this summer,” the lady informs her, “under new ownership. We were supposed to open Memorial Day, but that was a fantasy if ever I’ve had one.” She looks at Veronica curiously then, and she can feel her taking in her collared black dress, her ponytailed hair, her heels. “What did you do?”

 

For one second Veronica feels caught. For one second she thinks this lady is talking about her parents’ crimes or about her falling out with Archie: that’s how instinctive her guilt is, like even this complete stranger can sense it; then she realizes she’s referring to when Veronica used to work here, and she explains.

 

“Hmm,” the woman says, then smiles a little. “Well,” she shrugs. “If you’re interested, we’re hiring. Looking for an assistant to the new owner. Or, actually, we already had one, but she’s late and here you are, so I’ll take that as a sign. That’s a thing I do now, I take signs. It makes my kids really nervous.”

 

That makes Veronica smile, hard and bright. She definitely wasn’t looking for a job, especially not one that presents a significant likelihood of running into a bunch of people who hate her, but there’s something about this lady that’s winning. And besides, being holed up in the Pembrooke with nothing to focus on but Archie’s presence in this town and the way Reggie said Josie’s name at the party is so deeply unappealing that it makes her want to curl up into a ball. So she looks at the woman and says, “Who’s the new owner?”

 

She smiles back, dazzling and wry, like she has a secret that she really likes to tell, and she’s glad Veronica’s here so she can. “Me,” she says, sticking one smooth brown hand out for her to shake. “Emmeline Miller. Call me Emme. Can you start tomorrow?”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Archie’s neighbor is outside. He stops short when he sees him in his beanie and black boots, standing on his own green lawn stretching out toward the water. Well, that answers the question of how Veronica ended up at his party last night. Jughead was the only old friend Veronica ever introduced him to, and it was just the once, but Archie remembers him. He shakes his head. This is all feels a little too coincidental for him. He’s just about to turn and head for his back door, maybe pretend he never saw him, when Jughead abruptly turns and makes eye contact and then Archie’s got no choice but to approach him.

 

“Oh,” Jughead says awkwardly, and Archie knows he recognizes him too. “Hi.”

 

He makes a big show of pulling out his earphones as he strides over to him. “Hi,” he replies and extends his hand confidently for Jughead to shake. “I’m Archie Andrews,” he says coolly, “and you’re Shakespeare, right?”

 

Jughead looks taken aback. “Jughead Jones,” he corrects, “but I did write a book, yeah.” He side glances toward his own house. “Do you live around here?” he asks.

 

“Right next door,” Archie informs him, and watches his face change from uncomfortable to downright shocked.

 

“You--” he flounders for a second. “Wait, _really_? You’re the one who throws all those parties?”

 

“Does that bother you?” Archie inquires simply, still breathing hard from his run. His voice is a challenge.

 

“I--” the other boy stutters. “No,” he says finally. “No, not really. I’m just surprised, I guess, that someone so young can afford a house like that. What do you do for work?”

 

“I’m an investment banker,” Archie says. “I also own my dad’s old construction company, but I don’t manage it. It all pays well, I guess,” he shrugs, noncommittal, and that’s all the information Jughead’s getting. “I think I saw you at the party last night,” he adds. He didn’t, actually, but he wants to snoop and figure out for sure if Veronica and Reggie had been over with him.

 

Jughead’s looking awkward and embarrassed again. “Um, yeah,” he says. “Sorry. I know we weren’t invited.”

 

“We?” Archie presses, nosy.

 

“Me and my friends,” Jughead explains. “I mean, I think you know them -- Betty Cooper, Reggie Mantle, and Veronica Lodge.”

 

Archie keeps his expression neutral. “Those names sound kind of familiar, but I can’t really put faces to them,” he says like a jackass. “Anyway, nice to meet you. Let me know if you need to borrow a cup of sugar or something.” He starts walking away, toward his behemoth of a house. “That’s what neighbors are for, right?” he calls over his shoulder, and disappears through his back door.

 

Once he’s hidden from view he slouches in a chair in his kitchen, ignoring the chef who’s standing at the stove making breakfast. After everything he did to reinvent himself after high school, fate really had to play this joke on him and give him one of Veronica’s strays as his neighbor. He sits there in his empty mansion. It’s full of expensive furniture and antique paintings. There’s a pool out in the private courtyard painted in scrawling calligraphic print with his initials, AA. When he bought this house, the realtor told him about the _European oak floors,_ the _carrera marble countertops_ , the _east and west facing decks in the master suite._ Spiral staircase, elevator, heavy chandeliers crafted from from strass crystal and glass. Archie’s still not even sure he’s explored the entirety of the house. He’s constantly surrounded by upwards of fifty servants all around the property, there at his beck and call whenever he needs anything, but other than them, he’s usually here alone. Except after dark, of course, when he has everyone from every city in the vicinity over to screech and laugh and get drunk on his property, and when he finds a one night stand to sleep in his bed for a few hours before he disappears early the next morning and leaves a note telling them they should probably be gone by the time he gets back.

 

The person he was in high school wouldn’t even recognize him.

 

And that’s exactly how he likes it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Veronica’s first shift as Emme’s assistant consists mostly of searching for and organizing the one thousand to-do lists she’s left scattered all around the property. She finds one clipped to the activity board by the spa that says simply, _LINEN_. By the time she thinks she’s found them all, she’s filled eight full pages of old Riverdale Inn stationary.

 

“Good God,” Emme says when Veronica walks into her office to deliver the complete list. There’s a truly explosive mess on the desk, purchase receipts and phone numbers. She has two kids -- William plus a little girl named Abby who can’t be more than four and said not one word the entire time Veronica was in the room -- and there’s a trace of New York City in her voice. Earlier, she told Veronica she moved here from Brooklyn last fall. She didn’t mention William and Abby’s dad, and Veronica didn’t ask. They’re supposed to be meeting all the rest of the summer employees in a matter of minutes. “Let’s go,” Emme says, standing up. “I told everyone to meet at two in the lobby. I meant to get pizza,” she says, slapping a palm against her forehead. “Did I mention that to you, or did it just sit in my brain all day?”

 

“You told me,” Veronica promises. “I picked it up at lunch.”

 

“You’re a lifesaver,” Emme says sincerely, and Veronica smiles.

 

The grin doesn’t last long, though, because as soon as they step through the arched entrance to the lobby, she sees a whole lot of people she recognizes. Ethel Muggs is first, and when she locks eyes with her the other girl’s face darkens. Toni Topaz is there, holding Cheryl Blossom’s hand in hers -- they started dating in sophomore year of high school and have apparently managed to stay together all these years. Josie McCoy sits on Cheryl’s other side, and the sight of her makes Veronica’s stomach twist a little. She remembers the way Reggie looked at her. She resists the urge to walk over to her and ask her point blank if there’s anything going on between her and Archie.

 

 _It’s none of your business_ , she chants in her head, and keeps her spine as straight as possible. If Emme notices people noticing her -- and they are: Toni raising one sculpted brow and pointing her out to Cheryl, Valerie Brown eyeing her and whispering something behind her hand -- she doesn’t let on. “Alright!” Emme announces. “Did everyone get a slice of pizza?” The meeting doesn’t last long, just an introductory _welcome to the Inn_ and an overview of what kinds of duties everyone’s going to be undertaking this summer, then they all get released to check out their work stations and the ancient time sheet.

 

Afterward, she takes her pizza outside to the back porch overlooking the river, picking at the crust and trying to pull herself together. She can see Jughead’s house from here. She can see the shore where Archie was two nights ago.

 

She imagines she can feel people behind her the rest of the whole afternoon.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“All done?” Emme asks her at closing time, the sun just starting to set, turning the sky a million shades of burnished orange and lilac and rosey peach. Emme strolls down the staff hallway, both her kids trailing behind her, Abby’s hand tucked in hers. Veronica walks beside her.

 

“Yup,” Veronica tells her. “Remember you’ve got a meeting with the guy from the electrical company to fix the lights on the second floor tomorrow. I called to confirm earlier.”

 

William hurls his body against the main doors in the lobby and Emme says, “Good girl,” then locks up while Veronica heads across the parking lot toward her car. It’s exactly where she parked it this morning and it looks exactly the same save for one long, jagged white scratch across the driver’s side.

 

Someone keyed her car.

 

Not someone.

 

Ethel.

 

“God _damn_ it,” she says loudly, smacking her palm down against the window, and Emme looks over at her in alarm.

 

“You swore,” William calls cheerfully, climbing into the backseat of his mom’s car.

 

“Veronica?” Emme says, concerned. “You okay?”

 

She doesn’t want her to come any closer, feels positive she’ll be able to figure out the whole shameful story just from a keyed car and the look on her face. In the end her desires don’t matter, because Emme comes around to the driver’s side of the car and lets out a low whistle.

 

“Veronica,” she says. “You know who did that?”

 

For a second she thinks maybe it wasn’t Ethel. She thinks of Cheryl’s pale knuckles, of Toni’s wide smile, of Josie’s angelic voice. Her insides twist.

 

She’s about to lie to Emme, and she can tell she knows it and she’s not going to buy it one bit. “Just an accident,” Veronica says, smiling against the stinging behind her eyes. “No one to blame but myself.”

 

Emme looks at her sympathetically. “Let me know if you need anything, okay Veronica?” At her nod, she adds, “I’ll see you in the morning.” She pats Veronica’s arm. Gets in her own car and drives away.

 

Veronica leans her head against the cool metal top of her car. She listens to the flow of the river just behind the Inn. On her other side is the maple lined road, crickets just starting to chirp. Around the bend, she hears a car coming, sees headlights approaching, and when she looks up, she sees a yellow maybach mercedes cruising by. The driver has the windows rolled down, and she squints a little to see who it is.

 

Her heart nearly stops when she realizes.

 

Archie recognizes her at the exact moment that she recognizes him, and she imagines she can see his eyes widening even with the yards of increasing space between them. His mouth is slightly open and he just keeps looking at her as he drives by, the two of them forever locked in eye contact until one or the other of them gets away.

 

 _Keep your eyes on the road,_ she thinks weakly. Watches his tail lights disappear.

 

It’s not even thirty seconds later that she hears the screech of the car as he makes a u-turn and comes right back. Her heart pounds as she watches him pull over right in front of her and practically tear the car door off its hinges as he opens it. He gets out and stands there on the road and looks at her. He has the faintest hint of stubble on his cheeks. His red hair is windblown. When they were freshmen in high school, all the girls used to try and touch it, and it used to make him nuts.

 

For a second Veronica only just watches him, quiet and shocked. Besides the party the other night, they haven’t shared space in more than four and a half years when Reggie’s expose came out at the tail end of their senior year. It was Reggie who showed it to Archie to begin with, just walked right up and handed it to him, and he immediately texted her to tell her what was going on, that there was this flyer going around school and if she needed to leave he could drive her home. It was the first thing he’d said to her in months that wasn’t prelude to a fight, and Veronica had to read the message twice before she could figure out what the hell had happened.

 

What had happened was that her family had finally been caught.

 

She became immediately terrified and defensive, and considering she and Archie had already been arguing so much, she refused to accept his offer, and that would be her burden to bear. She ran home and texted him saying she needed space and she’d let him know when they could talk. He listened to her, and for the last week of school as everyone -- namely Ethel -- tormented her, he kept his distance because she told him to. She graduated, at least, but on that same day she ran home and packed her bags and texted Archie saying she was leaving that very night to stay with her extended family for the summer in New York, then she was starting at NYU. She didn’t know if she was ever coming back to Riverdale. She said it was best if they went their separate ways.

 

Archie turned up in front of the Pembrooke ten minutes after she sent the text, holding his phone in his hand. There was a crease in the middle of his eyebrows.

 

“Is this real?” he asked her, and his voice was choked and stricken. The truck was still running in front of her house. It was raining, freezing cold sheets coming down, and despite the metaphors, the rain did not mean renewal. It meant things were falling apart. Warmth from the engine huffed out into the pale air.

 

Her hands shook and she balled them into fists. She should have just gone to him to tell him this. Instead she made him come to her. “Archie,” she said, and her voice shook.

 

“Veronica.” Archie looked torn apart, like something had exploded inside him. He looked like someone who’d come home and found his house burnt to ashes. “I said, is it true? Are you--?” He shook his head, so disbelieving.

 

She couldn’t even answer him. Already the raindrops were mixing with her tears. She nodded, a feeling like a building collapsing inside her, the breaking of her own heart.

 

Archie took a step back then, like she’d physically struck him. There was water collecting on his eyelashes and in his hair. “Okay,” he said slowly, then, fast: “I need to -- yeah. I need to go now.”

 

“Archie,” she said again, curling her fingers around his arm to try and stop him, to explain, to apologize; he shook her off and threw himself into the truck as fast as he could, slamming it into reverse and taking off like someone who hadn’t expected to be there very long at all. Veronica stood on her steps in the rain and she watched him recede into the distance, her heart and her history _gone_.

 

Now she holds her breath and waits for him to say something. The sky has changed from amber to a hundred shades of magenta to a quiet twilit blue, and here they are, just the two of them, staring at each other like they’re on opposite sides of the river.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I got lots of positive feedback on the first chapter of this story, so I hope you enjoyed this one as well! How many times are these two gonna make eye contact before they finally talk? :') We get to see Archie's point of view in this chapter and I'm slowly letting you guys in on how much he's changed since high school, and what caused those changes. It's a story I'm really excited to tell.
> 
> If you'd like to chat about this fic, my tumblr is @ vaarchie and I love to talk so I'd be more than happy to! Please remember to leave kudos and review the chapter and let me know what you think, it means a lot to me! xoxo


	3. Chapter 3

_“All I kept thinking about, over and over, was 'You can't live forever; you can't live forever.”_

― **F. Scott Fitzgerald** , **The Great Gatsby**

  
  


In the end, Veronica is the first one to speak. “So,” she tries, voice coming out like sandpaper, like maybe it’s been four years since she’s talked. “Heard any good gossip lately?”

 

Archie doesn’t smile, but his eyes do change just a little. She can’t see it from here, but she knows he has an eye freckle, one lighter fleck in the brown on his left side. She used to stare into his eyes and focus on it, like she could see into his soul that way. He swallows a little. “Yeah,” he replies. “I heard Veronica Lodge was back in town.”

 

It's not a good joke, but it would still be funny, maybe, if anything about this situation was at all funny.

 

“Why are you standing here, Ronnie?” he asks then, and the sound of her old nickname makes her breath catch right in her throat before she can stop it. No one has called her that since they broke up. The bruise under his eye has faded to a sickly yellow.

 

She struggles to come up with an answer, but what comes out instead is, “What happened?” The two of them are both still standing there frozen, neither willing to chance even half a step closer.

 

“I hit somebody,” he tells her flatly. “Then I got hit back.”

 

That surprises her. Archie has never been that kind of person. Actually, Fred and Mary were pretty much the poster parents for nonviolent conflict resolution. Growing up, they made Archie work out his arguments using stuffed animals. “Are you okay?”

 

“Yup,” he says without elaboration.

 

“Okay,” she nods. She wonders who he is now. She wants to ask him when he became someone who threw the first punch. She wonders if she somehow made him this way.

 

“Why are you standing here?” he repeats.

 

“I--” Veronica stammers. She tries to hide the scratch along the body of the car, but Archie sees it anyway. To her relief, though, he says nothing. “I just got off of work. I -- uh, work at the Inn. I’m heading home now, I guess.” She trails off, unsure how to continue. When they were younger, the two of them used to sometimes talk about serious things sitting back to back, like it made it somehow easier if they didn’t have to look at each other. She wonders how he would react if she asked him to do that with her now.

 

Instead he nods and looks uncomfortable and impatient and says, “I thought your car was broken down.”

 

She swallows and shakes her head. There’s an elephant they’re going to have to address sooner or later, and finally Archie just says it.

 

“You and Reggie,” he ventures, then stops, like he doesn’t want to finish the thought and he’s quietly asking her to just fill in the blanks for him so he doesn’t have to say it.

 

“Archie,” she starts. “Reggie and I are--” Jesus, she doesn’t want to say it either. _Why are you making me do this?_ She asks silently.

 

 _Why are you making_ me _do this?_ He wordlessly replies.

 

“--engaged,” she finishes, and for the first time since Reggie popped the question, she doesn’t smile when she makes that announcement.

 

She watches Archie’s face change, watches him crack wide open and vulnerable, and for a moment she has the urge to block him from the view of the rest of the world, so no one else can see him in his rawest state. When he broke down and crumpled to the ground at Fred’s funeral their sophomore year, Veronica sunk down to the grass with him and shielded him from the other attendees so that none of them could bear witness to his private grief.

 

Archie takes a deep breath. His eyes are darting around, gaze cast downward. Finally he looks up at her and says, “You’re-- _engaged_ ? To _Reggie_? After what he--” He rubs his hands hard over his face. “You’re…”

 

“ _Archie_ ,” she says, and that’s it, just his name and every emotion she’s ever felt behind it.

 

“ _How_?” he asks, then immediately holds his hand up to stop her before she can answer the question. “Okay, Veronica. Okay. Your car isn’t broken down. I have to go, okay?” He takes a breath and opens his car door. “Okay,” he murmurs.

 

“Archie,” she tries again, but he shakes his head.

 

“It’s okay,” he repeats. His eyes change, and now they’re hard like steel, and he has never, ever looked at her that way. “Do what you want, Veronica. You want to be Reggie’s trophy wife and let him show the world that he can have the girl whose life he ruined? Go ahead.”

 

She takes a step back like Archie’s hit _her_ this time, like tomorrow morning she’ll wake up and find angry bruises under her eyes. Her whole body goes rigid and tense. Archie’s calm as the eye of a hurricane, though, getting into his car and turning it around again, a practiced indifference like maybe he never stopped for Veronica to begin with. Like maybe she was never here at all.

 

* * *

 

The last thing Veronica wants to do after her encounter with Archie is go home to Reggie, so instead she gets in her car and drives toward Jughead’s house. She’s surprised when it’s not just his car she finds in the driveway, though -- in fact, it’s Betty’s car she discovers parked right next to his. She’s about to turn right around and get out of here -- she can’t be sure but she has a feeling she’d be interrupting something if she knocked on the door -- but then Jughead himself comes out onto his porch and waves at her, so she turns the engine off and heads over to him.

 

“What’s up?” he asks, letting her into the house.

 

“Hi, V,” Betty greets cheerfully. She’s sitting on Jug’s couch looking right at home.

 

Veronica smiles at the two of them and collapses into a velvet arm chair. Through the sliding glass doors, the river is moving imperceptibly. “Work was a little rough,” Veronica explains. “I hope you don’t mind me stopping by, Jughead, I just really didn’t feel like going home yet.”

 

Jughead shakes his head. “No worries. You’re welcome any time. So, hey,” he says now, walking over to a small wooden table against the side of the couch and picking an envelope up off of it. He hands it to Veronica. “Look what I got in the mail. From the neighbor next door.”

 

The envelope is colored gold and sleek, and the stationary inside it is embellished on card stock. It’s got Jughead’s name written in stunning calligraphy, but what really takes Veronica by surprise is the message inside.

 

_Mr. Jones,_

_The pleasure would be entirely mine if you could attend my little party. Bring friends._

_Yours sincerely,_

_A. Andrews_

 

“A. Andrews?” Veronica reads aloud. Then she drops the invitation and gets abruptly to her feet, pushing her way through the glass doors and rushing out onto the back deck. She leans against the railing and stares at the house next door, the entire endless expanse of it, the dock and the immeasurable distance of green lawn. It looks like a place where distant relatives of the Kennedys would live. It does not look like a place where Archie Andrews, the boy who gave his last coins to street performers and homeless people, the boy who was so earnest and humble and practical it made Veronica’s heart ache, would live.

 

“That’s _Archie’s_ house?” she asks disbelievingly. It seems to grow somehow taller as she stares at it.

 

“Yup,” Jughead says heavily, he and Betty coming out to stand beside her. “I ran into him and our interaction was actually awkward and weird, but I guess he liked me because he told me no one needs an invitation to get into his parties, but he sent me that one anyway.” He shakes his head. “Did he ever mention investment banking as his dream job when you guys were…?” Jughead trails off, looking apologetic.

 

“No,” Veronica says. _He hates math_ , she thinks numbly. _He’s wanted to be a musician since he was a little kid._

 

Jughead shrugs. “I hope this isn’t going to make you avoid coming over to my house like the plague,” he attempts a joke, but it’s half hearted at best.

 

“No,” Veronica repeats, then gives him a weak smile. “It’s been a long time since Archie Andrews influenced my decisions. And you can’t get rid of me that easily.” She sighs while Betty laughs a little. “I’m going to have a good summer no matter what.”

 

“That’s the spirit,” Jughead elbows her encouragingly. “Do you guys think I should go to the party?”

 

Veronica looks at him, shrugs. “If you want to. It’ll be fun, probably.” Fixes her gaze on the water.

 

“So then can I float something here without the two of you totally freaking out?”

 

“Sure,” Veronica and Betty say in unison.

 

“How would you guys feel about coming with me?”

 

Veronica actually snorts. “No _way_ ,” she tells him, shaking her head so hard and resolutely that it might actually break off and go bouncing away. “ _Noooo_ way.”

 

“Nice try,” Betty says.

 

“No. No,” Veronica sings. “A thousand times no.”

 

“I told you not to freak out!” Jughead protests, laughing. “Look, I know it’s ridiculous to even ask you--”

 

“It’s a _little_ ridiculous, yeah,” Veronica agrees. She tries to imagine it, her showing up at Archie’s ludicrous party like they didn’t just have a nightmare confrontation on the side of the road. Like they didn’t just spend four years broken up with no closure or discussion. “Like, can I come to the party with Josie who probably hates me, and everyone from high school who hates me, and _Archie_ who hates me more than anyone and who I used to date, and Reggie who I think is--”

 

She cuts off abruptly, embarrassed suddenly, and unsure how to continue. Unsure how to say, _Reggie who I think is pining over his ex and having regrets about our relationship. Reggie who I think I’m having regrets about._ The idea of turning up at Archie’s house with anyone other than Archie himself is enough to make her clam up completely, enough to have her wondering who the hell she thinks she is. Talking to him on the street and asking about his bruise and joking around with him is one thing -- a stupid, selfish thing, but one that was free and circumstantial and ultimately harmless. Attending his party after she told him what was evidently the absolute last thing on earth he wanted to hear?

 

That’s a different animal entirely.

 

“Reggie who you think is… what?” Betty looks at her curiously.

 

Veronica waits a minute before she speaks. She can hear the sound of cicadas and the far off hoot of an owl. “I mean--” she says, waving her hands around and feeling awkward in a way she never has in front of Betty and Jughead. “I just don’t think he’d be too thrilled to go to my ex-boyfriend’s party,” she finishes lamely.

 

The truth is she feels like she lost all decision making capability the moment she got to NYU. The truth is she feels like she hasn’t been able to tell the difference between love and loneliness in a really long time. She _does_ love Reggie, certainly -- his relaxed nature and how easy it is to be around him, like he expects the world to be on his side and so it is, simple as that. But the minimal moments she’s spent with Archie have somehow felt like gemstones, like the two of them being near each other again is a state of affairs that was divinely ordained by destiny and the stars and the fate of their souls.

 

It’s a stupid thought. Probably she’s mistaken. Probably she’s just romanticizing it. Because Archie -- and now she looks at his house again -- Archie has a new life, one that’s successful and riotous and in no way whatsoever involving her. Archie is happy. He’s happy without her. Four years later and that’s the thought that feels like fresh torment, like she’s standing in the rain and watching him drive away all over again, her bags neatly packed upstairs.

 

“You know what?” Jughead says brightly then. “Let’s not talk about it anymore right now. Want to go to Pop’s?”

 

The suggestion is a good one. Pop’s is probably the only place on earth that can cure even her blackest of moods. She smiles slightly. “I’m still not going to the stupid party,” she mutters, and heads inside to grab her keys.

 

* * *

 

The next day goes a little differently. The Inn opens in just a few days and Emme is dialed all the way up, on edge and stressed out. This morning she had Veronica and Abby dusting the crown molding in the lobby with q-tips, and by the time her shift is nearly over Veronica is so exhausted that when Ginger Lopez walks past her in the staff hallway and waves at her, she’s stupid enough to wave back in the one second before she switches it to the middle finger and skips away laughing with her friends.

 

Now Veronica rubs hard at her temples, headache pounding. There’s still a half hour left until she’s off but some of the staff are already heading home, and as she stands behind the desk in the main lobby, Josie McCoy comes walking toward her looking as worn out as Veronica feels. And she can’t blame her, truly -- Josie’s working swim classes this summer and Veronica can’t even imagine what pool duties must have been today. Emme probably had her scrubbing grout out of the tiles with a toothbrush or something.

 

She was never super close to Josie or anything, but most of the memories she has of her involve the two of them singing together, and she’s glad she has those happy moments to remind her that high school wasn’t all bad. She can’t believe there was time when NYU wanted her to come to their school specifically so she could sing, but that’s exactly what happened, the recruiter showing up with her blonde hair secured in a tight bun and a music folder tucked under her arm like maybe she was planning to run on back to New York right after this to teach a class.

 

They called her into Guidance and sat her down and handed her a pamphlet. “It’s just something to think about, for next year,” the woman had said.

 

When Veronica opened Archie’s car door in the parking lot after school that day, the afternoon sun made warm patterns on his face. He kissed her briefly and with one hand on the back of her neck and she handed him the pamphlet and he said, “Whatcha got?”

 

His expression changed as she explained.

 

“It’s weird, huh?” she said.

 

“Yeah,” Archie replied. “It’s _really_ weird.”

 

“It is?” she asked, stung even though she was the one who’d said it first. “Oh.”

 

“No, I don’t mean because you’re not a great singer,” Archie amended, then broke off and looked at her strangely as he pulled out of the student lot. “Wait,” he said. “Do you _want_ to go?”

 

“I’m not sure,” Veronica said uncomfortably, wishing suddenly that she hadn’t told him. She’d never felt that way around him. Every waking thought she had spilled out more or less constantly when she was around him, and it had always been that way. “No. I mean, I don’t think so. No.”

 

“What are they gonna have you doing there, singing Christmas songs in a choir?” he joked, and that chafed her a little, truthfully. It wasn’t like Archie to be so hugely dismissive. Or okay, it _was_ , ever since his dad died, but not with _her_. Veronica was the one he listened to.

 

“I sing Christmas songs with the Pussycats already,” she pointed out quietly, picking at a loose seam on the edge of her seat. “I think this place gives private lessons. Whatever, I don’t know. You’re right, it’s dumb. Forget I said anything.”

 

They were stopped at a red light then, and something about her tone must have gotten his attention, because he turned to look at her. “Ronnie,” he said, staring at her like she was playing a trick on him. “Hey, talk to me. Do you want to go?”

 

“No,” she said stubbornly. “I just -- I don’t like hearing you talk like it’s not even a possibility, you know?”

 

“But it’s not a possibility,” Archie said, looking honestly confused. “Right?”

 

Right?

 

 _I’m only just thinking about it_ , she wanted to tell him. _It’s nice that somebody wants me for something._

 

She looked at him across the car for a moment, laced her fingers through his, and squeezed. “Right,” she said. The light turned green, and Archie went.

 

Now, Josie stops right in front of the desk. “So, hi,” she says, leaning against the wooden front. She notices how wiped Veronica looks and asks, “Long day?” She’s wearing shorts and a Riverdale Inn t-shirt with the old logo on it, one she must have found floating around the hotel somewhere.

 

“Long day,” Veronica echoes.

 

“Look, Veronica,” Josie says, then stops. “God, this is awkward. This is really awkward, isn’t it?”

 

“A little,” Veronica admits, a hint of a smile.

 

“Okay,” she says, “Well we’re in it now, so I’m just gonna push through. I don’t want it to be weird between us just because you and Reggie are engaged. I mean, we work together, and whatever happened between you two after we broke up, you definitely never did anything to me, you know? And even though--” she stops, wrinkling her nose up. “I hope you feel the same way about me.”

 

Right away Veronica feels enormously grateful, and also two inches tall. “I thought you hated me,” she blurts before she can stop herself. She blinks at Josie. “I mean, ‘cause of--”

 

“Reggie and I were pretty serious,” she says.

 

“Yeah,” Veronica cuts her off with a nod.

 

“But I definitely don’t hate you. Besides, I have a boyfriend of my own now.” She shrugs. “He’s the sous chef, actually. His name is Liam.”

 

“Wait a second,” Veronica says, gaping. “You’re not dating Archie?”

 

Josie looks honestly stricken. “ _What_?” she asks. “No way.”

 

“But the party the other night--”

 

“We were just talking. About life stuff. Completely casual and platonic. Don’t worry, V, I have absolutely no intention of starting anything up with him.”

 

Veronica shakes her head immediately. “No, it’s not like that,” she says, embarrassed. “I mean, whatever it used to be -- it’s definitely not like that anymore.”

 

“Well, whatever,” Josie smiles. “So, we’re okay, then? I just didn’t want to spend the whole freaking summer doing that Mean Girls stuff, that’s not really how I roll. We’re okay?”

 

“We’re _fine_ ,” Veronica tells her, smiling widely. Even if Archie’s going to hate her forever, it occurs to her to be glad he’s got a friend like Josie. “Yeah, we’re good.”

 

* * *

 

Archie shows up at the Inn minutes later just as the black-blue storm that’s been threatening Riverdale all day finally breaks open.

 

“Hi,” Veronica says, nearly losing her breath before she remembers that this isn’t five years ago when he used to pick her up every night after her shift. He’s not here for her. She remembers what he said to her yesterday and curls her fingers around the main desk like she’s bracing for physical pain.

 

Archie nods. He’s across the lobby, sofas and chairs and a table between them, but still he takes a step back like she’s radioactive or carrying a contagious disease. “I’m here to pick up Cheryl and Toni,” he says, hardly any intonation in his voice at all. “We’re drinking,” he says simply. “Cheryl texted.”

 

“Okay,” Veronica nods slowly. The polite thing to do would be to leave him alone but she finds herself staring anyway, rude like a little kid with no manners. He’s wearing an expensive looking watch. His light blue button down is pressed and he has the sleeves pushed halfway up to his elbows.

 

Investment banking, she thinks solemnly. It may have been four years since she last saw him, but if _investment banking_ is really what he’s gotten up to lately, then Veronica must not know him at all anymore. It feels impossible to imagine him in a job like that. She certainly can’t see him being happy. Then again, finding out she’s engaged to Reggie Mantle was probably a bigger wrench in the whole _we know each other inside and out_ situation than that. It makes her want to scream. It makes her want to sit him down and make him spill out everything to her. It makes her want to spill out everything to him.

 

“I heard Jughead invited you to the party,” he says now, and Veronica is surprised he’s saying anything at all while he’s still keeping the distance of a football field of space between them.

 

“Okay,” Veronica says again, tucking her hair behind her ears, wondering what else he’s heard, wondering what the hell that conversation looked like. She wants to ask him how he thinks his dad would feel about his life’s choices, but even though she’s shocked and confused, she isn’t cruel, and she would never say something that would hurt him like that. “Yeah. I told him I wouldn’t come, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

 

Archie shakes his head, just slightly. “I don’t care what you do, Ronnie. I thought I told you that.”

 

Veronica feels her cheeks heat up. “Yup,” she says, straightening her stack of papers with more force than is strictly called for. “You did.” Her shift ends in five minutes and she’s ready to go home and crash into bed and sleep for endless hours.

 

She turns to head back to Emme’s office but glances back at the last second, and Archie is staring right at her, the weight of his gaze like a tangible thing. It’s been years since she touched him but still she knows every inch of him anyway, the learn by doing familiarity that comes with the kind of passionately driven relationship they shared, how his voice sounded when he would rasp out her name as she slinked down his body and how once when they were in science he texted her and point blank asked her if she wanted to go back to his house after class.

 

“I saw what they did to your car last night,” he says, still looking. She misses him so stupidly much, in the way that makes her bones physically ache. Like being unable to touch him is making her burn. Like being unable to love him is making her tremble. “Whoever it was, you should tell them to go fuck themselves.”

 

She crosses her arms, instinctive and embarrassed. She hates knowing that he’s aware of just how many people in this town are against her. It makes her feel all at once alone, though she knows she isn’t. “I thought you didn’t care what I did.”

 

Archie gets this surprised look on his face like he wasn’t expecting that from her, and to be honest, she wasn’t expecting it from herself either. There’s one second when she thinks he might be about to smile, and her heart starts beating a little faster as she waits for it, the way you hold your breath in anticipation as they announce the talent show winner or you wait for a butterfly to land on your finger. In the end he just shakes his head.

 

“I don’t,” he says. “You want to come to the party, Ronnie, come to the party.” There’s an expression on his face that she can’t read.

 

“Is that an invitation?” she asks, disbelieving. She’s not even sure if he’s serious or not.

 

“Call it whatever you want,” he shrugs, then finally turns to leave, heading for the doors and the raging storm outside. “Tell Cheryl and Toni I’m waiting in the car.” He stops to look at her one more time before he walks outside. “Be seeing you, Ronnie,” he says, and if she didn’t know better she’d think it was a promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Hope you enjoyed this chapter. Please remember to review here. My tumblr is @ vaarchie if you'd like to chat! I'm also on twitter now as @ vaarchies. Have a great week!


	4. Chapter 4

_“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.”_

― **F. Scott Fitzgerald** , **The Great Gatsby**

  


Veronica has been on edge ever since she got home from work, ever since Archie went walking out into the rain and leaving her with his _whatever-you-want-to-call-it-so-possibly-an-invitation_ to his party. It’s all so cryptic it makes her want to scream, and the fact that she’s overthinking it so much is not helping the situation here at all. She’s sitting in bed with her glasses perched on her nose, trying her best to distract herself with the book in her hands, but every time she finishes reading a page she realizes her thoughts are drifting elsewhere and she has to go back to the top and start over again.

 

“You good?” Reggie asks, peeling the covers back and sliding into bed next to her. He has his phone in one hand and a mug of green tea in the other.

 

“I’m fine,” Veronica mumbles, grabbing his tea and taking a sip.

 

He feigns annoyance. “Get your own,” he complains, but he’s smiling at her.

 

“Yours tastes better,” she winks, and hands it back to him. Then she sighs. She hates feeling like she can’t tell Reggie what’s going on. She hates feeling like she’s harboring some big secret and making this into a way bigger deal than it needs to be. Like she’s just making things harder for herself.

 

She thinks about how her relationship with Reggie first began. She ran into him in the library at NYU and thought she was going to faint, to be perfectly honest -- she’d had no idea he was attending the same school as her, certainly, and apparently neither had he.

 

“Whoa,” he said, taken aback. He had a pile of textbooks in one hand and his laptop tucked under his arm. He had the decency to look embarrassed. “Veronica.” What followed was him awkwardly spilling out an apology for what he did to her at the end of their senior year -- he swore up and down that he was reformed and hoped that she could forgive him.

 

She couldn’t; not at first, anyway. She was still shattered over her breakup with Archie and had decided to subconsciously pin it all on Reggie’s exposé, though honestly that stupid flyer was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. The mess that Archie and Veronica had made was all their own. No one to blame but themselves.

 

She saw Reggie in the library a lot after that, sometimes in passing and sometimes when one or the other of them would somehow end up at a table that was in closer proximity than Veronica would have preferred. She made no friends for the first few months of school, and she didn’t know about Reggie’s social calendar, but he was spending an incessant amount of time studying. Of course now she knows he was only hanging around there so much so he could see her. To this day, he says she’s the reason he passed all his classes with flying colors.

 

Eventually he wandered over to her and asked if he could sit with her -- he was really struggling with this one calculus problem and he was pretty sure she’d taken that AP class in high school, right? He looked so hopeful that Veronica Lodge didn’t have it in her to turn him away, even after everything. It went that way for several weeks, the two of them sitting together in that quiet, public place, talking about their majors and their extracurriculars and their roommates. They talked about anything and everything. Anything and everything besides what they’d left behind in Riverdale.

 

It was getting late one Tuesday evening, and Veronica was packing up to head back to her dorm when Reggie suddenly turned to her and asked her, so haltingly it sort of broke her heart, “Do you want to maybe get dinner with me tomorrow night?”

 

“Um,” Veronica said, taken aback and surprised by how much his question made her feel happy. She almost couldn’t keep from smiling. It occurred to her, somewhere in the very back of her heart, that she hadn’t felt that way since Archie. “Hm,” she said, pulling the strap of her bag up over her shoulder. “So here’s the thing. I’m not really mad at you over the flyer anymore -- I mean, I am still mad, but I think it’s something I could eventually get over, you know, if you and I decided to be friends. But I’m just… not in a position to be dating anyone right now.”

 

Reggie raised his eyebrows. “What makes you think I’m trying to date you?” he asked, and at her shocked expression, he laughed a little and said, “I mean, I’m definitely trying to date you. But if that’s not a possibility, I get it. Honestly, no pressure. I’d also really like to just be your friend.”

 

“Really?” she asked, trying to find the catch.

 

He smiled at her. “Really.”

 

So that’s how it began -- as a friendship. Still, when he mentioned going on a few dates with someone in his American Writers seminar in the middle of January, it put her in such a bad mood that she cancelled her plans to go see a movie with him and headed straight for Central Park instead, breathing in gulps of the frozen winter air.

 

 _Don’t be ridiculous_ , she scolded herself. Reggie might have thought he wanted to date her for a minute there, but only because he didn’t actually know her at all. Besides, she definitely wasn’t looking for anything romantic. She wasn’t ready, and she didn’t know if or when she would be. It was selfish of her to want him to wait for her when the day might never actually come when she’d want another relationship.

 

Still, as the weeks went on she saw him more often than not. They went for pizza at one of the restaurants on campus. They sat on the first floor of the student center and studied for exams. One day in March, they sat and watched an improv group perform something so strange and confusing that it had the two of them trying to figure it out during their entire walk back to the dorms.

 

“That was…” Reggie said, shuddering like a dog shaking off bath water.

 

“Odd?” Veronica supplied.

 

“That’s one word for it. I need a drink. You want to come over and have a drink?”

 

Veronica looked at him, eyes wide and curious. “Okay,” she said after a moment.

 

So they headed for his dorm, and there was a moment when she almost slipped on a patch of melting snow, but Reggie reached out and caught her by the hand.

 

“Thanks,” she said, breathless, and he nodded and started to pull his hand away, but she surprised the both of them by tightening her grip like a reflex.

 

Now it was his turn to look at her curiously, but he didn’t say anything, just held her hand and lead her up to his dorm. His roommate wasn’t there. She was freezing, and he gave her a blanket and dug a bottle of fireball out from under his mattress, contraband that could get him in trouble if the RAs caught him with it. Instead of drinking any, though, he just sort of sat beside her on his bed and looked at her, and that was enough to make her spill.

 

“Listen,” she began, taking a deep breath. “I know I told you I only wanted to be friends, and I appreciate how cool you were about that.”

 

“Well,” Reggie grinned. “I’m pretty cool, as you know.”

 

“Shut up,” Veronica said, then kept going. “Like, it’s pretty easy to tell when a guy is trying to make something that isn’t a date into a date, or that he’s annoyed that it isn’t a date, or -- the point is, you’ve never been like that. And at the risk of sounding super dramatic or like I’m in a lifetime movie or like I’m being super vague on purpose, there are things about myself that I don’t necessarily like to talk about. Things you don’t know.”

 

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Reggie asked.

 

“No,” Veronica scoffed, surprised and a tiny bit -- absurdly -- offended.

 

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

 

“No,” she smiled.

 

“Are you a Republican?”

 

That made her laugh. “No,” she said, smiling and kicking at his calf a little.

 

“Then whatever it is, I don’t care,” he shrugged. “Here’s what I do know about you. You’re smart. And forgiving. And also probably the most beautiful person on this planet.”

 

“Well,” she breathed out, and now their faces were so, so close. “I don’t know about that.”

 

“I do,” Reggie said confidently, and leaned in to kiss her.

 

* * *

 

“Archie Andrews invited me to a party,” she blurts out, tossing her book down onto the bed and taking her glasses off. She looks at Reggie a little helplessly.

 

His eyebrows shoot up. “He _what_ ?” he asks, putting his cup of tea down and locking his phone. “When did you even _see_ him, V?”

 

“Earlier tonight,” she admits, squinting her eyes shut. She launches into the whole story, how someone keyed her car and Archie stopped to see if she was broken down, how Jughead is his next door neighbor and he suggested she and Betty go to the party with him, how Archie came to the Inn for Cheryl and Toni tonight and ended up inviting her himself.

 

“I’m gonna kick his ass,” Reggie says solemnly. He looks seriously angry, and it makes Veronica’s heart rate kick up.

 

“No!” she exclaims. “It’s not like that. I mean, he wasn’t--” she swallows. Her fingers are curled around his arm like possibly he’s getting ready to go clock Archie right now and she has to stop him. “He definitely wasn’t making any moves on me.”

 

“I think inviting you to a fucking party he’s hosting sounds like he’s making a move.”

 

“He _wasn’t_ ,” she insists. “Okay? Stop.”

 

Reggie groans. “Why are you even working at the Inn, Veronica?”

 

That makes her get a tiny bit defensive. “What do you mean?”

 

“This,” he says, throwing his hands up like the _this_ he’s referring to might be the entire world. “This summer. It was supposed to be about relaxing and having a good time before we have to head out into the real world. I don’t know. Instead it feels like I never see you anymore.”

 

“I have no friends, Reggie. Have you noticed I have no friends? I mean, I have Betty and Jughead, but you know what they do? They work. I don’t want to be here alone all day while you go romping off to God knows where.”

 

It’s the wrong thing to say, apparently, because Reggie gets mad. “God knows where?” he repeats. “I’ve been running errands, Veronica. Jesus. Visiting my family, catching up with people. If you weren’t working you could come with me.”

 

“Whatever,” she says quietly, shaking her head. She wants to believe him. Wants to expel the quiet voice that keeps telling her that something about this isn’t quite right. “I want to go to the party and get drunk. I don’t know. Let loose. You can come or you can stay home or go _run errands._ I don’t really care.” She gets out of bed and leaves to go sleep in the guest room before either of them can say anything else they’ll regret.

 

* * *

 

“You’re not _coming_?” Veronica asks disbelievingly. She sits down hard on her bed the next day, her hair half done and her lipstick glistening. “Really?”

 

Betty’s voice comes over the phone, apologetic. “Polly and the twins are coming to visit tonight and my mom is on a rampage trying to get everything perfect. Says she _really needs my help_.” Betty sounds honestly regretful, and Veronica can’t even be mad.

 

She sighs. “Okay,” she says, and looks at herself in the mirror. “I mean, what do you think? Should I just stay home? Reggie already doesn’t want me to go, and if _you’re_ not going…”

 

“Don’t be crazy,” Betty objects. “Of course I think you should still go. You deserve to go wild for once, you know? Besides, Jughead will think we’ve totally abandoned him.” Betty must pull the phone away from her mouth for a second because Veronica hears her shouting something to someone as if from a distance. “I gotta go, V, but yes, my professional opinion is that you go to the party and have a good time.”

 

“Thanks, B,” Veronica says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 

“Definitely. Breakfast. See you then!” Betty clicks off and Veronica stares at her reflection again, then finishes getting ready.

 

Jughead is coming to get her so she doesn’t have to walk into the party by herself, and when he shows up, he looks genuinely excited.

 

“You ready to go?” he asks. “Loins girded, et cetera?”

 

Veronica snorts, buckling herself into the front seat. “Uh huh. Just drive, will you? Before I come to my senses and duck and roll out of your car.”

 

“I know we’ve technically attended one of these things before,” he says, turning the key in the ignition, “and it’s not like I’m planning to do much socializing, but still. I think it might be fun.”

 

“No, for sure,” Veronica agrees. “I think it will be a lot of fun. I just wish…” she trails off. She’s got to stop doing this, letting her inner feelings seep out in the half second before she can catch herself and shut her mouth.

 

Jughead understands, though. “You wish Reggie was coming?”

 

“I wish Reggie wasn’t absurdly jealous for no reason. As if being invited to the party means I’m going to leave him to rekindle my relationship with Archie,” she actually scoffs a little, like the idea is that ridiculous. _But wouldn’t that be something?_ comes that grating whisper from the very back of her secret heart.

 

“I get it,” Jughead nods, taking the turn onto the winding road that leads down to his neighborhood. It’s not even quite dusk, and already there’s a clog of traffic, of cars making their way to Archie’s house. Veronica thinks there’s no way he knows all these people personally. “Honestly, I sort of wish Betty…” Now it’s Jughead’s turn to zip his lips. Veronica turns to look at him with wide eyes.

 

“What’s that?” she asks, smile growing slowly. “Please, continue.”

 

“Nothing!” Jughead laughs, turning into his own driveway. Veronica eyes Archie’s house next door.

 

“Nothing?” she repeats. “ _Nothing_ going on there at all?”

 

Jughead smiles, shaking his head. “Can we please just go party?”

 

She throws her hands up, finally, letting him off the hook. “Okay, okay,” she says. She raises her eyebrows. “But for the record, I totally endorse this.”

 

“Enough,” Jug gripes, and they get out of the car.

 

* * *

 

If Veronica was previously operating under the delusion that’s she’s _technically attended one of Archie’s parties before_ , she now knows that that was definitely not the case. This time, she’s not winding down through Jughead’s shrubs to get into the backyard bonfire. This time, she’s bypassing the stunning forefront of fountains and entering in through the massive front doors.

 

Festivity is erupting around her from the moment she steps inside. Vaguely, she hears Jughead trying to inform someone that he has his invitation in case they need to check it, and the amused response informing him that no one has an invitation and he needs to keep moving, he’s holding up the crowd trying to get through the doors. There’s gold all around her, synthetic or maybe not -- there are beautiful girls dressed to the nines, their hands attached to the coats of men trailing behind them, faces flushed red with alcohol. She sees butlers or servants or hired help standing sentry and stark in every corner, fitted in black and keeping careful watch over the goings on in the enormous room. Chandeliers glisten like stars above her. There’s a staircase that looks like it would lead straight up to heaven if you climbed it for long enough.

 

It’s almost hypnotic, the beauty of it all, but there are people filtering inside, and Jughead leans forward to tell her they should probably keep moving. Veronica scans the room for Archie, almost instinctively, but she doesn’t find him anywhere. She tries not to feel too disappointed about that. It’s his party -- surely he’ll turn up sooner rather than later. She and Jughead snake around one of the many marble pillars and party guests, and a waiter stops in front of them with a silver platter crowded with an array of obviously alcoholic drinks balanced on one hand. He offers them to Veronica and Jughead rather absentmindedly, like if they want them they’d better take them quick, he has places to be. Jughead reaches out and grabs two. He offers one to Veronica but she declines to partake; she’s not entirely objecting to drinking tonight, but she wants to stay level headed for awhile longer as she takes in the whole scene -- Archie’s new life -- and not have any of what she’s seeing clouded by alcohol. Jughead shoots back both drinks, then announces he need to use the bathroom.

 

“Okay,” Veronica says, peering outward. “I’ll meet you out on the deck?”

 

At Jughead’s nod, she heads for the back of the house, where floor to ceiling glass doors have been flung open wide, clouds of purest white fabric curtains billowing as the breeze gusts in and ripples through them. She pushes through the curtains and steps outside, the air colder without the aid of hundreds of bodies pressed together to keep her warm. There are still a ton of people out here, but a lot less than what she just left behind. The floor of this deck is made of cream colored, smooth stone, and on its own it’s almost the width of Jughead’s whole house. There’s a huge rectangular pool in its center, the water shimmering in the light cast down by the lurid bulbs affixed overhead. It’s calm as anything right now, but something tells Veronica it’s going to be filled with bodies and beating hearts by the time this night is over.

 

“It’s cold out here,” comes a voice behind her, and she breathes out.

 

“I feel warm,” is her response, the gentle swirl of her dress as she turns slowly to look at him.

 

Archie is standing there, and he says, “You look good,” in an easy, noncommittal tone.

 

The two of them shamelessly drink each other in for a few moments. He's wearing another button down with rolled sleeves, but this time it has thin, gray vertical stripes down white fabric, and the top few buttons are undone. His pants are perfectly fitted and his hair is slicked back in a way that would seem just perfectly _devil may care_ if she didn't suspect he put a lot of thought into his appearance tonight. She’s never seen him in a setting like this, but still the familiarity of it all takes her breath away. That look on his face. The way his hands are folded behind his back. She imagines he’s trying to hide their shaking. It seems like the two of them should be far away from here, like they should be standing on the grass in front of Archie’s childhood home, Mary’s rose bushes climbing clear up either side of the porch like something out of a fairytale and the cracked window in the upper right corner from when Archie hit a baseball the summer he was eleven.

 

She remembers how much she used to love Riverdale in the summer, when the cicadas were loudest. Those were the summers of laughter and linen, of sunshine and sweltering, of sugar and shimmering promises that were kept. The summers with Betty and strawberry ice cream in waffle cones. The summers with Archie and pink satin lipstick stains against the smooth planes of his throat. The summers of children’s laughter. That was then.

 

And this is now -- the summer of sweat and sin, of things rising quietly from a slumber she thought would last forever. The summer of shadows and too many storms. It would be easy to think that nothing lives here now, though her heart is always pounding.

 

“Nice of you,” she says mildly, and he smirks.

 

“Enjoying yourself?” he asks, and she shakes her head slowly at him.

 

“What is this, Archie?” she says, voice barely a whisper. “What have you been doing?” she stares up at the house towering above her.

 

His mouth is set in a straight line. “Good fortune, I guess,” he says in a voice like he actually doesn’t have good fortune at all. The pounding of the music seems to be coming from miles and miles away. He clears his throat and nods at her and turns, disappearing back inside.

 

It’s an hour later that Veronica sees him again, standing up on the first landing of the elegant staircase, kissing a girl she’s never seen in her life, pressing her into the railing, and the sight of it knocks the wind out of her.

 

She flinches at her own reaction, like she has any right to feel even remotely upset. She’s engaged to Reggie, for God’s sake. It’s like she’s some kind of jealousy demon. She forces herself to look away.

 

In the next hour, it’s a different girl he’s got his mouth pressed to, the two of them in the shadows set away from the pool. It could be anyone, but it makes Veronica’s heart clench simply because it’s not _her_. It makes her want to scream. It makes her want to dive into the pool with all the rest of the people who by now have decided to get in, splashing loudly through the water illuminated a bright synthetic blue, their cries of glee threatening sensory overload.

 

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Archie emerging out of the half darkness and staring up at someone on one of his balconies. He makes a gesture, and in the very next second the sky is exploding with technicolor, fireworks going off right above them, and the people scream that much louder, crazed with adrenaline, their cries twisting and pulsing with ripe joy.

 

Veronica starts to think maybe she’s ready to head home once the party descends down onto the shore for the bonfire. Thinks maybe coming here was a bad idea, like she’d known it all along. It’s chilly away from the fire pit, goosebumps rising on her arms and legs, but she finds Jughead sitting on the sand a few feet away, a mostly finished drink dangling from his fingers. As he sits up, Veronica can tell he’s a little drunker than is probably appropriate for driving.

 

“So, hey,” she says, crouching down next to him. “I should probably start thinking about an alternate ride home, huh?”

 

Jughead furrows his brow. “I… definitely shouldn’t drive, yeah,” he agrees. “But I’ll find someone to take you.”

 

“I could take your car,” she suggests, “then drive it back before work tomorrow.”

 

“No, I gotta go to the publishing house tomorrow,” he says, then groans. “I have to go to the _publishing house_ tomorrow. Shit. I’m an idiot. Anyway, let me see if--”

 

“I can take her.”

 

Veronica startles, her head whipping around in the darkness, and there’s Archie again, no girl attached to his lips this time. He’s looking at her with the same hard stare she’s gotten used to from him, like they never slept together with their limbs tangled under the sheets or told each other their worst fears. She feels herself blanch. “Archie,” she swallows. “You don’t have to.”

 

But Archie’s already turned toward his driveway, keys jangling, looking at her over his shoulder. “You coming?” he asks.

 

Veronica swallows and nods.

 

* * *

 

According to the clock on the dashboard, it’s nearing 12:30 AM by the time Veronica climbs into the passenger seat of Archie’s Maybach, clicking the seatbelt into place. This car is _nice_ , that’s for sure, but it’s not the car she thinks of when she thinks of Archie. She thinks instead of Fred’s truck they used to drive all over town in. She thinks of the time they put blankets and pillows in the bed to look for comets.

 

“Thanks for taking me,” she says now, recovering from the memories. “You really didn’t have to do that.”

 

Archie doesn’t look at her as he drives. The light from the dashboard casts a reddish glow over his face. “I know,” is all he says.

 

They ride in silence the entire way to the Pembrooke, passing by the Inn as they go. Archie’s is the only car on the road, headlights carving white through the darkness. She opens her mouth then closes it again, unsure of what to say, unsure whether she should say anything at all. Wonders if any of it would matter.

 

After what feels like a living eternity Archie finally comes coasting to a stop in front of the Pembrooke. “Okay,” he says, shrugging a little, hands resting on the steering wheel. It’s the first thing he’s said since they left his mansion. “See you, I guess.”

 

“Uh-huh,” she nods mechanically. “Thank you. I-- yeah. Uh, thank you.”

 

“No problem,” he mutters. She’s barely even out of the car when he starts peeling backwards, which is why she’s so wholly surprised when he stops and puts it back in park before he’s even halfway back on the road. He gets out of the car and slams the door shut, making Veronica’s heart jump.

 

“Fuck it,” he says, pushing his hand through his hair and closing the distance between them in three huge steps. “I just. Fuck it. I hate this.”

 

“Archie,” she says, heart pounding fast and manic in her throat. “What the hell?”

 

He shakes his head. “I hate this,” he repeats once he’s reached her, once she can smell him, overwarm and familiar, heat radiating off of him. “Jesus _Christ_ , Ronnie, how can you not hate this? Just being in the same car as you makes me want to crawl out of my skin. I fucking hate this. I really do.”

 

She stares at him, stunned, unsure if this outburst is global or specific, if she should apologize or yell back or kiss him hard and honest right here where they’re standing.

 

If he’d even let her. What it would mean if he did. What it means that part of her might want to.

 

“I hate it, too,” she ventures finally, years of history pressing at the insides of her rib cage, like time itself is expanding in there. “I’m so sorry, I--”

 

“I don’t want to hear you’re sorry, Ronnie.” God, he sounds so, so tired. He sounds so much older than they actually are. “I want it to stop feeling like this.” Archie shakes his head. “I want... I want...” He breaks off. “Forget it,” he says, like he’s suddenly remembered himself, like a sleepwalker coming back from a dream. “This was stupid, I don’t know. I wanted to make sure you got home; you’re home. Like I said, I’ll see you.”

 

 _“Wait,”_ she says too loudly, her voice ringing out in the quiet. “Just. Wait.”

 

She sits down on the ground where she’s standing, night-damp grass whispering cool against her legs. Then she turns her back. “Come on,” she says, facing away from him just like they used to when they were in high school and needed to talk about something important or embarrassing. “Sit.”

 

“Are you serious right now?” he asks her instead. “I-- no, Veronica.”

 

Even though she can’t see him she can picture the look on his face exactly, the barely contained annoyance, like she’s embarrassing them both. For once, she doesn’t care. She tips her chin backward until just the top of his head comes into view behind her. “Just humor me for a second, okay?” she asks. “You can go back to hating me right after, I promise. Just humor me for one second.”

 

He stares at her for one long second then sighs. “I don’t hate you,” he says quietly, and sits down, pressing his back into hers, his broad shoulders warm.

 

It’s the first physical contact they’ve made in four years, and though it’s basically insignificant, her whole body reacts to it anyway, like so many sparks flying between them. It’s like she can feel him in her bones, and she holds very, very still. “No?” she breathes in. “You don’t?”

 

“No,” he whispers, then all at once: “I don’t like you with Reggie,” he says quickly. The back to back trick still works. “I just think about you with him and I hate it.”

 

She thinks she can feel the blood running through her veins. “Well, I don’t like you with your random hookups,” she says quietly, addressing the empty space in front of her. “So long as we’re airing our grievances.” His hand is on the grass, not too far from hers.

 

“I don’t know if you get to have an opinion about my random hookups,” he says solemnly, “considering I’m not engaged to them.” His hand moves away from hers then, sitting up a little straighter. Cold air slices between his back and hers.

 

She turns around, losing the physical touch entirely. “Reggie isn’t the same person he was in high school,” she blurts out. “Come on, Archie. Before anything ever happened with Reggie’s exposé, me and you were fighting constantly. We have no one to blame for our break up but ourselves.” She’s surprised she said it. It may be true, but technicalities have never, ever mattered when it came to the two of them.

 

“But things were getting better,” he says harshly, still facing away from her. “Then you just left, a whole three months earlier than you had to. You left me without even saying goodbye.”

 

She sighs, settling back against his shoulders again. “I’m so sorry,” she repeats.

 

“It’s fine,” he says. “I mean, it’s not, but it’s fine.” He pushes his back more firmly against hers, so she can feel him breathe. “So we’re even, then, is what you’re saying?”

 

It takes her a moment to realize he’s looped back around, that’s he’s referring to her and Reggie versus him and his hookups again. “I don’t know that I’d call us even, exactly.”

 

“No,” Archie says, and she wonders if she’s imagining it when he presses his shoulders to hers a little harder, like he’s letting her know he’s still here. “I guess not.”

 

They sit there quietly for a minute. The crickets are calling from the trees and a dog barks in the distance. Then Veronica sneezes, and Archie snorts.

 

“Shut up,” she says immediately, sending her elbow back into his ribcage. He catches it for a moment in his hand before letting it go.

 

“Sorry,” he says. “Bless you.”

 

“So what do we do now?” Veronica asks quietly.

 

“I don’t know,” Archie admits. Neither of them has made any effort to move, like if they turn and look at each other’s faces this spell will be broken, this feeling of calm and safety and home. “I have no idea.”

 

“We could try being friends,” Veronica ventures, a little cautious, like she’s getting dangerously close to the edge, like she’s got more to lose than she did twenty minutes ago. If Archie shuts her down that will be the end of that. “I mean, we could try.”

 

Archie does turn to look at her then, and she does too when she feels him moving. He looks at her face, the barest hint of a smile on his face. “You want to be my friend?” he asks.

 

She shrugs. “I don’t know. Yeah.”

 

“Yeah,” he agrees, getting to his feet, shaking his head. Offers a hand to pull her up. “Let’s be friends, Ronnie, sure, let’s try it.” He heads back toward the car. “Can’t be any worse than what we are now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd love to know your thoughts! Reminder that you can find me on tumblr as vaarchie and twitter as vaarchies. Have a great week!


	5. Chapter 5

_"There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired."_

**\--F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby**

 

Archie takes a different route on his run the next day, closer to downtown and eventually over the bridge and into the Southside, past some weird commercial remnants from when they started a failed redevelopment project in this part of town back in the 80s. There’s a closed down restaurant, a family owned water park called Splash Time that looked like a lawsuit waiting to happen even when Archie was five, and a resource center with a dry lawn and a flimsy sign in the window that says **SOUTHSIDE CITIZENS UNITED FOR SAFETY**. Archie is so distracted thinking about Veronica -- has been for the last twenty four hours, dwelling on that moment in front of her house and what it may or may not mean -- that it doesn’t really register in his mind until he passes it again on his way back, pushing through the last couple of miles.

 

Right underneath the bold print on the sign there’s smaller text -- **Local author Jughead Jones leading community in the fight against drugs. Meetings every Monday and Wednesday at 6 PM.**

 

Huh. So that’s what his nationally revered neighbor has been up to? Saving the Southside? It almost makes him laugh as he jogs past.

 

Once he gets home he grabs a bottle of water out of the fridge and heads upstairs to the rooftop deck. This is one of the only places in the whole house where he never lets the partygoers hang out -- because they’re usually drunk and might tumble right over the railing, for one thing -- but mostly because this is where he comes to be in complete solitude, to make business calls, to reflect on things he usually keeps hidden away. He remembers the first night he moved into this house, how he came up here and stared out at downtown a mile away, lights twinkling. There was one light, though, that stood out a little more than the others, higher up and somehow brighter. The light shining out from the Pembrooke. He drank until he couldn’t walk straight anymore, and stared at that light all night long.

 

He can see it now, the Pembrooke, and wonders what Veronica might be doing, if she’s even home. His gaze shifts out toward the river, and he can see the Inn, too. It’s almost funny to him, how he bought this house way out here to be away from all the memories haunting him, and instead he gets a view not only of Veronica’s house, but also her place of work. It’s like she’s pressing in on all sides and he’s struggling to resist the urge to tell her all the things he’s had locked inside for the last four years.

 

 _He’s not the same person he was in high school_ , she’d said about Reggie two nights ago, and at the time that sentence made him want to laugh in her face, but when he really thinks about it… he’s not the same person he was in high school either, is he? In fact, Archie changed for the emphatic worse, and from the looks of it, Reggie changed for the better. Why else would Veronica agree to marry him? He certainly wasn’t seeming like such a bad guy when he was having fun on the dock with her, making her laugh, and Archie suddenly wants to kick himself. It occurs to him that he should be _happy_ Veronica has someone like that.

 

He just hates that it’s not him.

 

He’s not even really sure why Reggie didn’t come to the party with her, if she just didn’t tell him or if he was busy or if he didn’t want to be there, but seeing her standing by his pool alone was enough to get his heart racing. She looked stunning, and she turned to look at him with more grace and elegance than he could ever hope to describe. But she’s Reggie’s fiancee, and she said he’s reformed and good and therefore he has no right to feel so shredded over their engagement.

 

His phone starts ringing in his back pocket then, and he fishes it out and checks the caller ID. Amherst. He rolls his eyes. James Amherst is his boss, he supposes, but only in the most technical sense. They’re equals is what they are, and if weren’t for Archie, Amherst’s entire organization would collapse. Though he loves to act like that isn’t the case, like Archie doesn’t know what he’s doing. He lets it go to voicemail, calling one of his subordinates instead to check on their latest delivery to Centerville.

 

Once the phone call is over (everything is right on track, as usual), Archie makes his way back downstairs, bypassing the main room. He hates being down here when there’s not a party going on; it makes him feel more lonely than what he’s comfortable with, and it reminds him of all the things his life is lacking, regardless of what he’s gained. When he bought this house, he remembers thinking for one brief and fleeting moment that Veronica would probably really like it, and it was that thought that made him look at the realtor and say, “I’ll take it.” He thinks about that now, wonders what she thought about it when she was here two nights ago. “ _What have you been doing?_ ” she asked as she stared up, and he couldn’t even bear the very _thought_ of telling her what he really does for work. He imagines how shocked she would be. How sad she would look. How much he would disappoint her if she knew. He clenches his jaw and makes his way toward his backyard, settling into one of the white lawn chairs on the vibrant green grass. He considers calling Cheryl or Toni or Josie, just to hang out, but ultimately decides against it when he spots Jughead Jones himself on his deck next door.

 

“Hey!” he calls, and Jughead looks. “How’d you like the party?”

 

Jughead waves. “Hey,” he calls back. “It was fun. Thanks for the invite.”

 

Archie gives him his most dazzling smile. “Don’t mention it,” he dismisses, then, “How would you feel about going for a drive?”

 

He can see Jughead raising his eyebrows even from here. “A drive? Where to?”

 

Archie stands up like he’s really excited for this drive already, like he knows Jughead is going to say yes. “Into town,” he announces. “I’ll buy you a drink. I’d just really like to make friends, you know, seeing as we’re neighbors and everything.”

 

And that’s how Archie ends up with his driver steering them out of Sweetwater Circle and toward one of the only bars in town, settling into a perfectly delightful conversation with Jughead in the backseat about what an excellent decision it has been on his part to have pursued a career in investment banking. It makes Archie want to throw up.

 

Crow Bar is a squat stucco building situated, ironically, right down the street from one of the most populated churches in town. A giant silhouette of the bird in question leers down at them from the wooden sign outside, and the bouncer gives them a perfunctory once over before waving them inside. It smells dank and beery, with a pool table at one end and the clang of some dumb song on the jukebox. “Shots?” Archie suggests, eyeing Jughead.

 

“Uh,” Jughead coughs, “Sure. Shots,” he echoes. The guy is a lightweight, Archie gathered that much from his party the other night, so he figures it shouldn’t be too hard to get him tipsy and loose lipped enough to spill what he knows about the drug activity on the Southside.

 

And it works, after awhile, after they’ve both had a few shots. “So,” Archie begins. “How’s it been, being back in Riverdale?”

 

“Really great,” Jughead says. “Really fun.”

 

“Yeah? You reconnected with friends, you said, right?”

 

“Yeah. Just the few I mentioned,” Jughead admits, sheepish. He suddenly won’t make eye contact.

 

“Veronica,” Archie supplies brazenly, getting whatever embarrassment Jughead seems to be feeling out of the way. “I’m talking about Veronica.”

 

“I’m-- I mean, yeah,” he answers. “Veronica. I just didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable. I know things were pretty serious between you two.”

 

“It’s fine,” Archie brushes him away, the shock of the statement still hitting him in the heart. Pretty serious. Right. “How is she? I drove her home, but we didn’t talk much,” he lies. They talked a lot, about things he can’t repeat here, can’t repeat _ever,_ probably, not even with her. “I know she’s engaged to Reggie.”

 

“Yeah,” Jughead tells him, loosening up a little. “She seems pretty good to me. Happy. Although--” he pauses. “Apparently Ethel Muggs spray painted her house the first morning she got back with some pretty vulgar words, and I know Veronica was pretty shaken up over it. She didn’t say so, but I could tell.”

 

Something hot stirs inside Archie at those words, his skin bristling, the instinct to protect her. Ethel Muggs practically terrorized Veronica their last week of high school, and she probably would have kept it up the whole summer after if Veronica hadn’t bolted the first chance she got. It makes Archie angry now, that Ethel could be so childish and evil after all this time, that she thinks Veronica still deserves to be punished for things that were never her fault to begin with. “But you said she’s happy?” he asks calmly. “With Reggie?”

 

Jughead shifts uncomfortably, but Archie doesn’t care. He needs to know. “She’s okay, I think,” he says slowly. “Sometimes there are moments where she seems… I don’t know. Something.”

 

“What?” Archie presses him.

 

“She seems… like she’s about to tell us something really honest about her relationship with Reggie before she catches herself and stops. I don’t know,” he says, shrugging a little. “It’s not very clear.”

 

A feeling swoops low in Archie’s gut, something he can’t quite put his finger on. She’s having doubts about Reggie? Reservations?

 

“I see,” Archie says, putting the topic away for now. “So what are you doing with all your free time this summer besides hanging out?” he asks casually, and Jughead shrugs again.

 

“Trying to lend a helping hand to the Southside, as much as I’m able,” he says, motioning to the bartender to get a beer.

 

 _Noble_ , Archie thinks dryly. “Oh, really?” he asks inquisitively. “And how are you planning on doing that?”

 

“The first step is to wash out the drugs,” Jughead informs him. The bartender slides his drink over to him and he takes one sip and wrinkles up his nose. “The Southside’s pretty infested with the stuff. It’s sad.”

 

Archie thinks about that. It is sad, he supposes, but he tells himself what he always does when emotions start to get too far involved with his work: it’s their choice. He’s not forcing anyone to do anything. All he does is make sure product is being delivered and moved.

 

“Wow, that sounds ambitious,” he says, taking a sip of his own beer. “How do you wash drugs out of a whole community?” he says it wonderingly, like it’s rhetoric or a side thought, but he knows Jughead will take the bait.

 

“Well,” he says, and Archie knows he’s got him. “Between you and me, I’ve hired some private investigators.” He shrugs a little, a humble gesture. _Private investigators?_ Archie curls his fingers into his palm, resists the urge to slam Jughead’s skull down on the bar. The thought makes him sick, and he pictures Veronica’s face _again_ , how disgusted she would be with him. Slowly, he unclenches his fist.

 

“Private investigators?” he echoes, trying to keep his voice as neutral as humanly possible. “Wow. So, I mean,” he clears his throat, “how does that work? Are they gonna find who’s making the drugs?” He’s trying his best to sound stupid, and Jughead smiles at him like he’s funny.

 

“Not who’s _making_ them,” he says, slowly like Archie’s a coma patient. “Who’s _distributing_ and delivering them.” He takes another sip of his beer.

 

“Wow,” Archie repeats. Around them, the music is annoyingly loud, though that’s probably a good thing considering this isn’t exactly the kind of conversation he wants anyone overhearing. “That’s awesome, Jughead. It’s getting kind of late, isn’t it?” He says suddenly, pulling out his phone to check the time. He has three more missed calls from Amherst, and he grimaces. “It’s six o clock,” he says vaguely.

 

Jughead lurches off the bar stool. “Six o clock?!” he exclaims, and clearly he’s drunk now, stumbling a little, but some realization is sobering him up pretty quickly. “Oh my God,” he groans, two hands fisted in his hair as he paces a short circle. “I have a meeting in the Southside right now. Can your driver drop me off there?” he asks frantically.

 

“Uh, you need to relax,” Archie says. He hadn’t realized he’d be disrupting Jughead’s meddlesome plans, but he just wandered into a very happy accident, it appears. “I think you need to skip the meeting, Shakespeare.”

 

“I can’t skip it,” Jughead says like the idea is absurd. “People are counting on me.”

 

“Hate to break it to you, but you’re drunk,” Archie says helpfully. “So probably you shouldn’t be going anywhere in public unless you want all of those people who are counting on you to see you under the influence.” At the broken look on Jughead’s face, he adds, “Dude, come on. Call whoever and tell them you’re sick. You got in a car accident. Family emergency. Whatever. Every second you waste is just another second they’re in that room waiting for you. Let them go home and eat dinner.”

 

Jughead scrubs hard at his face. “I’ll do it in the car,” he says finally, and the two of them head outside and get into the backseat to make the drive home.

 

* * *

 

 

Veronica gets a call from Jughead in the evening, inviting her and Reggie to come by once she’s off work to go swimming.

 

“What, in the river?” she asks, eyebrows inching up. She’s almost off work. The Inn opens tomorrow.

 

“Of course in the river,” Jughead replies. “It’ll be fun.”

 

Veronica shrugs even though he can’t see her. “Okay,” she says. Why not?

 

Twenty minutes later and she’s off work and picking Reggie up from the Pembrooke and they’re on their way to Jughead’s house. “So, I never asked you,” Reggie says casually from the passenger side. He looks tired, his lower lids rimmed pink. He’s already shirtless and wearing his swimming trunks. “How was the party at Andrews’ house the other night?”

 

Veronica makes the left turn onto Sweetwater Way, the long winding road that the Inn is on, and also the one that leads down to Sweetwater Circle where Jug and Archie live. “It was good,” Veronica says honestly. “I had fun. It wasn’t like a normal party. You wouldn’t believe how many people there were.”

 

Reggie nods passively as they roll by the Inn. “I’m sorry,” he says suddenly. “That I wasn’t there for you. That I didn’t go with you.”

 

Veronica gives him a sidelong glance, both hands on the wheel. It’s not often that Reggie apologizes. “It was fine,” she says. “I had Jughead.”

 

“Still,” Reggie says, and he’s staring straight forward at the road. “I shouldn’t have made you face Andrews by yourself.”

 

Veronica swallows a little. She thinks again of the look on Archie’s face when he found her standing by the pool. She thinks of his voice when he told her he would drive her home. She thinks of the heat coming off of his body in waves when he pressed his back to hers in the damp grass in front of the Pembrooke. She thinks of all the things he told her. “It was fine,” she repeats, quietly this time. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

 

Reggie is looking like he wants to argue with that point when Veronica finally turns onto Sweetwater Circle and Jughead’s house comes into view. Betty’s car is, unsurprisingly, already there. “So is that a thing that’s happening?” Reggie laughs quietly, his eyes on Betty’s light pink Volkswagen Beetle.

 

Veronica laughs with him as she pulls into the cool shade. “I have no idea,” she tells him, though truthfully her guess is yes, that’s definitely a thing that’s happening. She’ll have to ask Betty soon if she and Jughead are officially a thing yet.

 

They head inside, and after handing them sweating glasses of fresh lemonade, Jughead directs them to the back deck where Betty is waiting in her swimsuit, the river glittering endlessly before them.

 

Veronica sheds her sundress to reveal her own soft yellow swimsuit, the same sweet shade as the drink in her hand and the sunlight shining down on them.

 

“Let’s go,” Betty says eagerly, her grin wide. She grabs Veronica’s hand and yanks her toward the staircase on the side of the deck that leads down to the sand and the riverbed. The two of them pound down the steps smiling and then run straight for the water, stopping dead when their toes finally touch it, and both of them suck in sharp breaths at the contact.

 

“Okay,” Veronica says calmly, glancing up at the deck above them where Reggie and Jughead are watching them. “It’s really cold.”

 

Reggie scoffs. “Let me show you how it’s done, ladies,” he says confidently, and starts climbing up onto the railing of the deck.

 

“Oh my God,” Veronica mutters. “Seriously?” she calls. “It’s too shallow! If you jump, you’ll break your ankles.”

 

“Not if I jump far enough,” Reggie shoots her a dazzling smile and then he’s just doing it, launching off of the wooden bars and flying forward through the air, all his strength catapulting him further and further until he finally hits the water with a big splash and a perfect cannonball. It’s only a few seconds later that he emerges, shaking the water out of his hair and whooping. “Come on, V!” he calls.

 

Veronica looks over at Betty. “Maybe we should just run in?” she suggests. She doesn’t even hear Jughead come down the stairs, much less notice him get into the water until he’s charging in and splashing them, making both of them yelp and jump back. Veronica’s jaw hangs open in shock, and she can hear Reggie laughing.

 

“Oh, it’s on,” Betty says, her voice like a challenge, and then her hand is back in Veronica’s again and she’s pulling her out into the freezing water, and then the splash fight is in motion, and Veronica is suddenly laughing too hard to mind the unpleasant temperature. It only takes a few minutes for her to get used to it -- the water, but also the feeling of the whole thing, the pure untainted glow of having _fun,_ like maybe that’s not completely out of the question for her this summer.

 

Reggie tempts her further out into the water and she wades in up to her neck before she pushes herself up to float on the cool placid surface. Betty and Jughead are closer to shore, laughing, and Reggie is doing handstands.

 

She senses him before she sees him. When she does look up, though, there he is, a couple hundred yards away on his fresh green lawn in front of his astronomical house. He’s sitting on a white lawn chair and he’s staring out at the water, but she knows -- she just _knows_ \-- he’s aware she’s watching him. The logical thing to do would be to look away, but instead she stares until he breaks and looks back at her, and that’s all she needs by way of invitation to start swimming toward his dock. She calls back to Reggie to let him know where she’s going and he acknowledges her reluctantly, like he doesn’t want to be insane or not trust her, and she appreciates that. She moves quickly through the water and when Archie sees what she’s doing he gets up and walks down onto the dock to meet her there, crouching down on the wood as she reaches it and curls her fingers over the edge.

 

Archie likes swimming, or at the very least he used to. He used to say it made him feel calm. “Hi,” she says. She can hear the noise of everyone in the distance back towards Jughead’s house and the sound of quiet instrumentals floating out of Archie’s kitchen. Then, stupidly and a beat too late: “Buddy.”

 

Archie rolls his eyes at her. “Hey pal,” he says, the corners of his mouth twitching. It’s not really a smile, but it’s the closest Veronica’s gotten since she’s been back, so she’ll take it as a win. She grins widely. He looks more like his dad than he used to. “How’s it going?”

 

“Oh, the usual,” she shrugs, the warmth of the dock under her fingers. “Kicking ass, swimming in arctic waters.”

 

“Uh huh,” Archie smirks. He used to tease her for this exact thing when they were together, used to say that sometimes when she was nervous she would just get cheesier and cheesier until he finally stopped her. He stares at her. He waits.

 

She makes a face. He’s not going to make it easy then, this _being friends_ thing. It’s not his job to make it easy, she supposes. She tries again. “You’re coming to River Bend, yeah?” she asks. It starts in just under a week, Riverdale’s exquisitely lame take on Coachella: a bunch of young people camping in the forest, all the weed you could possibly smoke, and someone’s brother and his fratty band playing the same three stupid songs over and over. They went their sophomore year though, a whole group of them just for the day -- it was before Betty left for Arizona -- and she remembers feeling happy for the space of one sunny afternoon.

 

Archie nods, his hands on his knees, looking down at her as she bobs slightly in the water. “Looks that way, yeah,” he tells her. “Cheryl and Kevin want to check it out.”

 

“And Josie?” she asks suddenly, then mentally kicks herself as Archie quirks an eyebrow.

 

“Josie?” he asks, and she swears there’s a hint of amusement in his voice. “Why are you asking me about Josie?”

 

“I’m not,” Veronica protests, even though she just did. “I’m not. I mean -- okay. I’m going too. So I guess I’ll see you there then?” she shrugs awkwardly.

 

This time Archie really does smile -- at how hard she’s floundering, probably, but she’ll take what she can get. “Yeah, Ronnie,” he says, “I think you will.” Then he looks past her, over toward Jughead’s house. “You bringing Reggie?”

 

She looks up at him. “Why are you asking me about Reggie?” she imitates his earlier tone and his gaze shoots back down to her, eyebrows springing up.

 

“Ronnie--”

 

“I’m _kidding_ ,” she says, and then laughs. It almost hurts, how normal this feels. How right this feels. He slowly smiles at her again. “ _Everyone’s_ coming,” she informs him. “It will be just like old times.”

 

“Just like old times,” he echoes, and there’s a look on his face like maybe he’s silently pointing out to her that this is nothing like old times. She remembers, suddenly, how the two of them snuck away when they were at River Bend all those years ago, how he pressed her against the bark of a tree and kissed her long and slow and soft. The memory makes her swallow thickly as she stares at him, her eyes drifting down to his lips and then quickly snapping back up again, hoping he didn’t notice. “That sounds fun, Ronnie.”

 

“V!” she hears Reggie calling to her from the distance and she turns to look at him. “Come on! We want to play chicken fight!”

 

Veronica pushes out a breath. When she turns to look back at Archie again, he’s already up and walking back down the dock again, toward his house and away from her.

 

* * *

 

Veronica is rushing out the door on the first morning the Inn opens when her phone dings in her back pocket, alerting her to a new text. She pulls it out, thinking maybe it’s Emme asking her to pick up some last minute item, but instead it’s Reggie: _you didn’t say goodbye_ , says the message. There’s a frowning face at the end.

 

 _Sorry,_ she texts back. _Was trying to let you sleep in._ She tacks on a heart and is about to slide her phone back into her pocket when he texts back right away -- _Dinner tonight? I’ll get you after work?_

 

 _Sounds good_ , she replies, and gets in the car. She’s been thinking about the new job she has coming up in New York, how she’ll be joining a law firm, and wonders how different her life will be soon, how it’s going to drastically change _again_. She thinks about the wedding, and for one insane second she imagines inviting Archie; they’re friends, after all, right? The idea is laughably absurd, but still she can’t shake the image of his face when she told him she was engaged to Reggie, even all these days later.

 

Thankfully, work at the Inn is so busy that she doesn’t have time to dwell on it. They’re officially open for business, and it’s sort of insane to see the lobby so full after two weeks of it feeling abandoned and ghostly; there are middle aged dads in loud printed hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts wheeling giant suitcases around, and little kids floating on rafts in the river, sun bleaching white on their shoulders. A group of older ladies from Centerville planned their annual retreat for this weekend, and they sit outside on the sun porch all afternoon drinking martinis.

 

She waves at Josie’s Liam as she passes through the kitchen, smiles at Josie herself as she hurries past the pool; Emme has her running all over the place fulfilling tiny errands like delivering sugar cubes to the moody tea drinker on the dock and mopping dirt tracks off the smooth, wide pine floors in the hallway off the lobby. The redesign of the Inn has culminated in a sort of rustic feel -- there are thrifted plaid throws on the leather couches, big exposed wood tables, and a stuffed moose head hung up on the wall above the check-in desk that they’ve all taken to calling Sam. “Oh, he’s not real,” Veronica assures a terrified looking kindergartener when she notices him staring at it. She has no idea if that’s true, and in fact suspects it’s not -- oh well. Poor Sam.

 

* * *

 

When Veronica makes her way out into the lobby after she clocks out on the old time sheet, she’s considering calling Reggie to see if he’s still coming to get her for dinner before she hears quiet chatter coming from the hallway off the room. She peers around the corner and finds not a family of guests standing there, but instead, Reggie himself -- and he’s talking to Josie.

 

Veronica can’t quite parse out exactly what they’re saying as she rounds the corner into the dimly lit hall -- she can only make out the frustrated look on Reggie’s face and Josie’s defensive stance, a sharp, “I _can’t_ ,” popping past her lips in the moment before she sees Veronica.

 

“Oh, V,” Josie says, breathing out. Reggie takes a step away from her, eyes on his fiancee. “I  was just heading out,” she says, “but I’ll see you tomorrow.” She smiles weakly at Veronica before she slips past her and disappears, leaving her alone with Reggie.

 

“Okay,” Veronica says slowly after a long moment where the two of them are just staring at each other. “I--”

 

“Don’t worry, babe,” Reggie says, stepping closer to her and putting a hand on her back to turn her around and direct her back out into the bright lobby. She feels weird all of a sudden, grossly unsettled, like she’s catching a bug. The front desk is deserted. “It’s not what it looks like.”

 

She lets him lead her forward, toward the doors, then stops altogether and turns to look at him. “What was it exactly, then?”

 

Reggie looks at her, his brows furrowed. He swallows a little and Veronica watches his Adam’s apple bob. “V,” he says.

 

“What?” she asks immediately. She shifts her weight uncomfortably. “I mean, what were you two talking about? You can tell me, right?”

 

“It was nothing,” Reggie says, deadpan.

 

“Nothing,” Veronica repeats. He can’t be serious. Can he?

 

Reggie rolls his eyes like he’s in a position to be irritated. “What’s up with you right now, Veronica?” he asks.

 

She gapes at him, almost insulted. “I’m just _asking_ \--”

 

“Should I ask you what you were talking about with Andrews on his dock yesterday?” he demands sharply. He’s staring right at her, looking mad now. “I trusted you then, Veronica, but since you obviously don’t trust me, maybe I think I want you to tell me what you swam over there to talk about.”

 

Veronica takes a step away from him like he’s physically struck her. She doesn’t want to be fighting like this in the lobby. Emme is probably going to come out here any second and get mad or fire her. “I asked him if he was coming to River Bend,” she says solemnly.

 

“But like, _why?”_ Reggie presses her. “Why did you need to know that so badly?”

 

“I told you I’m friends with him again, Reggie--”

 

“Maybe I’m friends with Josie again--”

 

“Me and Archie weren’t _hiding_ like you were just doing.”

 

“Oh, no,” Reggie’s face twists meanly. “You were just flaunting it in front of everyone’s faces.” He shakes his head. “Jesus, Veronica. You’ve seriously lost it. Just go find Andrews and run into his arms, for Christ’s sake. I know that’s what you really want.”

 

Veronica’s jaw falls open for one second before she schools her expression into something neutral, anger boiling inside her. “Fuck you,” she says, and pushes through the front doors and out into the parking lot, away from the lobby.

 

“Veronica!” Reggie exclaims, right behind her. He grabs her wrist and she whirls on him.

 

“No, Reggie,” she spits out, yanking her hand away. “You don’t get to talk to me like that.” She swallows hard. It’s biting cold out here, colder than she’s ever thought of it being in the summer. Could be there’s a storm coming. Could be winter came early. “It’s not okay,” she says weakly.

 

The truth is she’s tired. The truth is she’s afraid he’s right. Here she is getting upset over Reggie talking to Josie while she’s been doing the same thing with Archie, while she’s been thinking about him _constantly_ , like the worst kind of hypocrite. That, to be honest, is what’s not okay. She’s overreacting -- she _knows_ that she’s overreacting -- but she feels close to tears anyway, tired and frustrated and so lonely all over again. Even Reggie is a lost cause to her now. It’s her fault, it’s her own stupid fault; she made her choices. But the truth is it doesn’t feel fair.

 

“V,” Reggie says, reaching out to take her hand again, and this time she lets him, a feeling like she’s burning in all the places his skin touches hers. “Listen, okay? I’m sorry. I really am. I shouldn’t have said that to you. I’m a dumbass.”

 

She nods to agree. She feels tears pressing hotly at her eyes and squeezes her lids shut to force them away. “Okay,” she says finally. She was stupid for ever thinking coming back to Riverdale would be a good idea. This town is cursed. “I’m hungry.”

 

“You still want to get dinner?” he asks, fingers linking into hers. When she nods, he says, “Okay. Just follow my car with yours and we’ll go to Pop’s.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd love to hear your thoughts! You can also find me on tumblr as vaarchie, and twitter as vaarchies. Have a great week!! xo


	6. Chapter 6

_"But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot."_

**\--F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby**

 

The drive over to Pop’s gives Veronica plenty of time to catch her breath and calm down, to recover from the entire encounter. She’s hoping by the time they reach the diner there will be no more tension or animosity between them, and that wish is, for the most part, granted -- she’s still hanging onto a little bit of wariness when they walk inside, but Reggie, for his part, appears to be completely recovered and back to normal as he slings an arm around her shoulders and guides her into a booth.

“Can I ask you something?” Veronica begins once they’ve ordered. It’s late but the diner is still noisy, the clink of cheap silverware on heavy white plates. She can hear something old playing on the stereo, Pop Tate taking a phone call behind the counter. She takes a breath. “Not that this is any of my business, and not that I’m, like, assuming anything, but how did you and Josie break up?” she asks. “We never really talked about it, did we?”

Reggie frowns at that a little; he looks surprised now, thick eyebrows arcing just the slightest bit. His eyes are brown and open. “No,” he says slowly, a dimple she’d forgotten he had appearing in the crease of his cheek as he smiles at her. He’s stupidly cute, Reggie is. All the girls used to say so, but Veronica never saw it until the moment that she did. “We definitely did not talk about it. But why are you asking now? Are you still upset about what happened at the Inn?”

_ It literally happened ten minutes ago, of course I’m still upset, _ she thinks about saying. “Just wondering,” she hedges, taking a bite of her burger. Then, once she’s swallowed: “You know, in the interest of avoiding further scandal, how it follows me everywhere I go and all.”

“Yup.” Reggie smirks. “Everywhere you and me go together, you mean?” He nods over his shoulder, just subtle: By the plate-glass window is a gaggle of people staring at them like they’re wanted criminals -- among them is none other than Ethel Muggs.

“Uh-huh,” she says, the itchy prickle of shame creeping down her backbone one more time. God, what is she even doing here? She hunches her shoulders defensively, imagining Reggie’s hand splayed out flat on her naked rib cage, thinking about the press of his warm mouth on hers. She thinks of the look on Archie’s face when he found out about them, like a thousand years of solitude was preferable to ever seeing Veronica again. She remembers how much everyone hated her when she lived here, and she pushes her plate to the side.

“Ignore them,” Reggie advises, swapping her fries for some of his onion rings, his tan arm brushing hers as he reaches across the table for the squeeze bottle of ketchup. Then, changing the subject altogether: “I don’t care that you’re talking to Archie again,” he tells her, voice so casual that for a moment she can’t tell if it’s put on or not. “As long as it’s just as friends.”

“It is, Reggie.” She flinches at the spray of laughter coming from the table by the window -- it’s one of the other girls from the Inn there with Ethel, plus two more she doesn’t think she’s ever seen before. She doesn’t want to  _ do _ this again, how it was before she left for New York, conversations stopping abruptly whenever she walked into a classroom, and  _ Veronica Lodge is a slut _ written in sparkly lip gloss on the bathroom mirror at school. “Are you going to answer my question?”

Reggie tilts his head, like  _ oh, right, you asked me something. _ “We were fighting a lot. Me and Josie,” he admits. “Honestly I think we just realized we weren’t meant to be.”

“Oh yeah?” Veronica raises her eyebrows. “That so?”

“That’s so.” Reggie smiles, confident and easy as ever, absolutely nothing to hide. “I also don’t care that Archie is going to River Bend. Josie is, too.”

She’s opening her mouth to tell him it really shouldn’t matter to either one of them that their respective exes will be attending when somebody kicks the back of her chair leg, hard enough to jostle her arm into the tall glass of chocolate milkshake in front of her. It’s almost empty but the leftover spills all over the table anyway; Veronica’s gaze snaps up just in time to see Ethel heading for the doorway, tossing a casual wave over her shoulder in Veronica’s direction. “Oops,” she coos sweetly.

_ Watch out _ , she starts to snap, but Ethel’s already through the doorway; Reggie swears and reaches for a napkin to mop up the ice. Veronica can taste the iron muscle of her heart, like she bit her tongue without realizing it.

She’s humiliated.

But more than that, she’s completely pissed.

She gets to her feet and stalks toward the door. She has no idea what she’s going to do, has no plan whatsoever. She just needs to find Ethel. Her nails curl into her palm and all her muscles are tensed. She’s ready for a fight. But at the exact moment that she pushes the door open and storms out toward the short step, someone is trying to get inside, and she crashes right into him, his broad chest warm.

“Ronnie?” he asks, arms circling her to catch her before she can fall.

“Archie?” she says, looking up at him. He releases her as soon as she’s got her balance, like touching her is the last thing he wants to be doing, and she steps away from him.

He must notice the murderous look on her face, because he squints at her a little and leans in closer. “Are you okay?” he asks. She shuts her eyes and when she opens them she finds Archie watching closely, like he’s ready to take any cue she wants to give him. Like he’s ready to let her lead. She takes a deep breath, lets it out again.

“I’m fine,” she says calmly.

“Andrews,” comes a voice behind her. She turns around, and Reggie is there, Veronica’s bag in his hand.

“Reggie Mantle,” Archie says, his face transforming. He looks at Veronica then like he doesn’t know her, his face completely changed, and smiles cruelly. “And his beautiful bride-to-be.”

“Andrews,” says a new voice, and Veronica looks to see who it is. Beside Reggie is a man she’s never seen before.

He’s not very tall, but still he looks hard and intimidating, close cropped facial hair and steely brown eyes. He’s wearing a suit and staring at Archie. “Mr. Andrews,” he says again, “If you’d care to stop dawdling on the steps, we have business to discuss. You shouldn’t be out here chatting.”

Archie’s eyes slide slowly back over to Veronica. As they do, Reggie steps out beside her and puts one arm around her, protective or defensive, and for a second she sees herself as the hypotenuse of some ridiculous triangle before Archie proves her wrong for the millionth time this summer by saying, “I couldn’t agree more,” and looking at the two of them with vaguely concealed disgust. He pushes past Veronica with all the delicacy of a hand grenade and goes inside the diner, bells jingling above his head as he rounds the corner into the bright, artificial light.

* * *

 

Amherst is practically apoplectic.

“Why the hell haven’t you been answering my calls, Andrews?” he asks on a low, angry whisper. He shoves a fry into his mouth, and Archie resists the urge to roll his eyes.

“I’m a busy man, Amherst,” he says flatly. “What exactly is so urgent?”

“ _ Busy man _ ?” he repeats. “Busy man?! You have a  _ job _ and a  _ responsibility _ to my business. I’m your superior, Andrews. Don’t forget that.”

Archie’s back straightens. “Like I said,” he says calmly. “What is so urgent?”

“Private investigators!” he hisses. He wraps his lips around the straw in his strawberry milkshake and takes a big sip. When he pulls back, there are tiny pink flecks on his mustache. “Sleuthing around on the Southside, asking the boys questions. Someone appointed them, and I need you to find out who. We need to take them out ASAP.”

“Take them out?” Archie repeats, brows furrowing. “What do you mean by that, Amherst?”

The other man looks at him, impatient and disbelieving. “I thought you graduated fourth grade, Andrews. Don’t you understand a euphemism when you hear one? We’re going to  _ kill _ th--”

“Okay,” Archie interrupts loudly. There aren’t any people in the tables near them, but he still looks around, wary of getting anyone’s attention. He was eighteen when he met Amherst. He still manages to blow his temper within seconds when he’s around. “Okay,” he repeats, quietly this time. “But do you really think that’s the best idea?”

Amherst looks appalled. “The only ones who would send private investigators after us are our competitors. They’re trying to bring us down so they can be on top and we can get thrown in jail.”

Archie really does roll his eyes this time. “What if the person who hired the investigators  _ isn’t _ our competition? What if they’re just looking out for their community?” He lowers his voice even more. “Why is your first solution  _ murder? _ ”

The first time Archie ever worked for Amherst, he was at the bottom of the hierarchy. He started out as nothing but one of many sets of eyes and ears for the business, eavesdropping on conversations in bars and serving as a lookout while back alley deals were conducted. He was barely out of high school, a teenager with shaking hands and wide, cautious eyes. He was never told exactly what Amherst’s business was, and he never quite understood just how expansive his reach was. Until one day, he did. Until Amherst promoted him to the status of official member with a ceremonial ritual, a knife across his palm and a pounding in his chest.

The next year was the most imperative and transformative of his entire life. He was tired of being afraid. Tired of feeling numb. Everyone he’d ever loved had left him. His dad, in the middle of a diner. His mom, in Chicago. Betty, his best friend. And then Veronica. He was sick of it, sick of feeling everything so much all the time, sick of depending on the presence of others to make him feel okay. He decided something over the course of that year. He decided that he would never need anyone ever again. So he didn’t.

Dealing the drugs was risky business, but he hardened up to it quickly and completed the work with intimidation and stealth. For the most part, that was all it was -- work. Business. Never, ever pleasure.

Except for that one time.

He was twenty years old and it was the night of the anniversary of his father’s death. He sat alone in the old warehouse Amherst operated out of in the dark, and alongside the crushing weight of loneliness, he was simultaneously filled with grief. At this point in his life, he considered himself fully broken away from all the things that had hurt him in the past, but in that moment he was nothing more than a child playing at being a man in a crumbling brick husk in an industrial boom town outside Riverdale. He was alone, with no one to call to ask for encouragement or direction.

Next came fear. 

He started jumping at shadows and phantoms: there were a lot of dark corners in that old trash heap. The shadow theater winded up to a fever pitch while he threw himself around the cavernous spaces, rearranging furniture and binge cleaning and running from his own thoughts. And then, suddenly, he was filled with a desperate sort of hope as he laid eyes on a baggie of cocaine on one of the tables.

Amherst usually kept all the drugs secured away in boxes and bags and bars of soap; he never left them out like this. But there it was, right on the table, drawing Archie toward the fine white powder he could almost see glowing inside. He’d nearly drank himself to death a few years back, but he’d never done  _ this _ before, not once in his whole life; he’d seen it done enough times though in this business that he was pretty sure he knew what to do.

It felt like snorting ground glass.

It felt like his stomach ache was taking a slow roll to the left.

It felt like a jackhammer behind his eyes.

And then.

And then it felt like waking up on a bright, clear morning. And then the universe began to glow.

It felt like walking on a tightrope with a blindfold on, knowing he could not fall.

It felt manic, energetic, better than he’d ever felt before. There was a ringing in his ears that built up to a deafening roar.

He was happy.

And he bladed up another line.

“Murder,” Amherst echoes now, “is what happens to our enemies.” The day after Archie snorted the cocaine, Amherst screamed at him for what felt like hours. He never did it again. “Listen, son,” he says. “I trust you. You know that. You’re my most valued director. You’re an executive. If you find out that the person sending these investigators after us is an average joe with no intention of dismantling our empire, then fine, I’ll believe you and we’ll beat the hell out of them and then let them go on with their boring life, okay?” He leans in a little closer, the scrape of the glass cup against the table. “But if you’re wrong? You tell me as soon as you know. You’ve made it to the top of the hierarchy, Andrews. You traffick and collect your checks and throw your parties in that mansion on the river while your subordinates do the dirty work. You paid your dues. Now all you have to do is keep our foes from destroying it all.”

Archie turns his head to stare out the window.

Of all people, it had to be  _ Jughead Jones? _

* * *

 

The next day is another long colorful blur, a Grand Opening cookout on the shore of the river and an old-fashioned pie-eating contest, prep for a huge fireworks display set to start at the end of the night. Veronica is headed back inside to grab more napkins from the kitchen when she runs into Toni.   
  
“So that’s happening, huh?” she asks, glancing at Veronica's engagement ring, eyebrows raised and a dozen different woven friendship bracelets stacked up one arm -- she had a poolside arts and crafts thing on the schedule this morning, Veronica remembers. Toni grins at her. Then, off her clearly stricken expression: “Oh, God, sorry, no, I’m not trying to give you a hard time or anything. I like Reggie, I think he’s a good guy.”

“No,” Veronica says immediately, the impulse to lie like a reflex. She remembers what she said to Reggie that night they were arguing;  _ I have no friends. Have you noticed I have no friends? _ “I mean, yeah he’s a good guy, I just--”   
  
“Hey, don’t worry about it.” Toni holds a hand up, shaking her head. “You know, don’t even answer that. It’s none of my business, I shouldn't be snooping in your personal life.”   
  
“No, it’s fine,” Veronica says, exhaling. “It’s just… I didn't realize you were okay with talking to me.”   
  
Toni shrugs. “I know everyone is like, super freaked that you're back in town and they're all thinking you're going to plot some big evil scheme to ruin our lives, but I mean.” She pauses, shrugs again. “I have no reason to think that. And anyways, you were always nice to me, so I don't see why you should be outcasted like you've got the bubonic plague.”

“Oh,” Veronica says. She blinks. “Okay. Thank you.”

“No problem,” Toni tells her, reaching up to scrape her hair into a ponytail. “Hey, listen, I don’t know if this is hugely weird or whatever, but Josie and Cheryl and I were talking about it, and we were going to ask you anyway -- we’re gonna do Crow Bar tomorrow, if you wanna come with.”   
  
It’s a suicide mission. It’s completely absurd.  _ Why are you even talking to me? _ she wants to ask her again.  _ Why are you being so nice? _ Still: “Sure,” she hears herself answer, like this summer’s got a swiftly moving current, like somehow she's getting swept away. “That could be fun.”   
  
Toni grins. “Good,” she declares, turning around and heading for the riverfront. “And, hey, your ring is really pretty.”

As she walks away, Veronica wonders if this is a trap, or if Toni -- and Josie and Cheryl -- are the only girls in Riverdale besides Betty that aren’t secretly applauding Ethel for dishing out exactly what she deserves. She decides she’s going to view this invitation as an olive branch; one that she’s not prideful or stupid enough not to take.

* * *

 

That night, Archie comes by the Inn again with Veronica’s coat that she left in his car after his party in one hand. This time, he doesn’t bolt the second he gets a look at her face. “Here you go, Cinderella,” he announces. William, who darted into Emme’s office with the giddy news that a  _ boy _ was here to see Veronica, peers at them from behind one of the couches.

“Cinderella left her shoe,” Veronica informs Archie, turning William around and sending him off to find his sister with a pat between the back of his shoulder blades.

Archie rolls his eyes a little. “I’m familiar with the fairy tale, thank you.”

“Thank  _ you _ ,” she corrects him, taking it from his hands. “For bringing it and everything.” She grabs the cup of coffee she has sitting on the main desk and busies herself with the lid, taking a long time to pull it back. She knows in theory there’s no reason to feel embarrassed in front of Archie -- they were both equally vulnerable the other night, right? -- but all the aggressive energy that had her agreeing to go to the party in the first place seems to have been bleached out by the last few days. “Do you need me to go find someone for you?” she asks. “Cheryl, or--?”

“That’s okay,” Archie says, pacing a little before he takes a seat on one of the sofas. “I’m early.” Then, as if he can somehow sense that’s she’s already feeling awkward and wants to make it worse: “Jughead told me what Ethel did to your house. Is she the one that keyed your car, too?”

Veronica raises her eyebrows at that. “You and Jughead getting close?” It’s not the kind of thing she’d ever expected to happen. Night and day, that’s what she thinks about the two of them and their personalities.

“I wouldn’t say  _ that, _ exactly,” Archie mutters, and then, “Well?”

When she realizes he’s still waiting for a response to his question, she sets her coffee back on the desk and says, “Oh. Um. I mean, I think so. Probably. But maybe not, even; as you know, there are plenty of people in this town who hate me and would be more than willing to make my life a living--”

Archie sighs. Veronica stops talking and picks her coffee up again. She hates talking about this. Hates remembering how alone she felt at the end of high school, how she felt like she had no choice but to run as far away as she could like some crazed, cornered animal. Hates that it’s happening again.

“Hey there,” Archie says like he can read her mind. He stands up and takes a step forward, meeting her gaze. “We’re on the same team, remember?” he asks, shaking his head and rubbing one hand over the back of his neck. “Look, I know you caught all the bullshit when everything hit the fan, but I was way more involved with all the shady stuff your parents did than you ever were, and no one ever blamed me for it. They just put it all on you, and I should have said something way before now, but I’m sorry for letting you push me away that last week and not being there for you. It’s fucked up that I wasn’t. But you and me, this summer and whenever else? We’re on the same team.”

That makes Veronica smile in spite of herself. “We are, huh?” she teases. “Partners in shame and degradation?”

“Exactly,” Archie laughs low and easy. She feels a warm flush at the sight of it, at the fact that she just got him to laugh -- she knows it’s genuine because she knows  _ him, _ knows how everything he feels is written across his face like a sign on the highway when he’s not putting up his new act where he hides everything from her. It’s one of her favorite things about him -- or at least, it used to be. “So,” he says now, “in the spirit of being dirty rotten scoundrels, I think you probably guessed that we’re drinking again tonight, if you want in. Kevin and Moose will be there, too.” He looks at her and shrugs, like he doesn’t care what she decides either way; but just the fact that he’s offering seems somehow significant to her. “I mean, now that you’re a social outcast, I’m figuring you’re free.”

“Rude,” she scolds, laughing, ignoring his easygoing tone and everything that might mean. “What happened to being on the same team?”

“I’m a social outcast, too!” he exclaims, which is absurd and also kind of winning. He really smiles when she cracks up. “Come on,” he says, like he senses he’s got her. “No one will see, you can crouch down in the seat until we get to the estate. Or wear a disguise.”

“Those glasses with the nose attached maybe,” she suggests, shaking her head. A tiny part of her brain is telling her to just do it -- the same part, probably, that had her agreeing to go to his party in the first place -- but the larger, logical side of her ultimately wins out. She smiles at him a little and holds her coffee cup up like a toast in his direction. “I think I’m gonna stick to this for tonight. I’ve got an early morning tomorrow.” She doesn’t tell him that she’s still nervous about hanging around with Cheryl and Toni and Josie (not to mention Kevin and Moose), even though she agreed to go clubbing with them not two hours ago. She doesn’t tell him that just the thought of going back to his mansion with him makes her nervous. She doesn’t tell him that she thinks she might really  _ want _ to, and that it makes her feel consumed by the worst kind of guilt. “Thank you, though.”

“Yeah,” Archie nods. “No problem.” She wonders if she imagines a trace of disappointment in his voice, and she thinks she must, because just a few seconds later his face lights up as Cheryl, Toni, and Josie themselves come walking in from the staff hallway off the lobby and he says, “You guys ready?”

“You don’t even have to ask,” Josie sighs dramatically, but she’s smiling; they all are, actually, and for a moment Veronica gets a very distinct feeling like she’s watching all of this happen from the fringes: an outsider.

“Yup,” Toni agrees, pulling her hair out of its ponytail and putting one hand on Cheryl’s back. “I’m ready to cut loose.”

“Great,” Archie says, “Me too.” The four of them walk out of the lobby and into the night. The cool air blows in through the doors as they shut, rustling Veronica’s shirt. No one turns to look back at her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little shorter than the others, but it's also one of my favorites because we get more of Archie's backstory -- among other reasons! I hope you liked it too and I hope you have a wonderful week. xo


	7. Chapter 7

_"She was feeling the pressure of the world outside and she wanted to see him and feel his presence beside her and be reassured that she was doing the right thing after all."_

**\--F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby**

 

* * *

 

It's been awhile since Veronica's done a proper girls’ night, but she's still an old pro, the smell of steam and burning as Cheryl curls her hair and a bottle of Apple Pucker Betty pulled from her purse like Mary Poppins, witchy green and syrupy like melted-down lollipops. Reggie's at dinner with his mom. Nobody dresses up to go to Crow Bar, but Josie insists they should anyway, pulling dress upon lacy dress from the depths of her duffel bag while Toni, Cheryl, Betty, and Veronica watch from the bed, calling out their myriad opinions like something out of a chick flick montage. It feels like the kind of pregame Veronica used to have with friends at NYU. It’s nice.

 

“Okay,” Josie says, shimmying into a black halter. Veronica's wearing a deep blue velvet dress. “Thoughts?”

 

“Do it,” Betty says cheerfully. She’s all smiles and spice tonight, brassy. “Your ass looks great in it. And I wanna go out.”

 

“Well, drink that delicious beverage, then,” Veronica tells her, nodding at her mostly full juice glass of Apple Pucker with a grimace. She likes sweet things, but three sips of this stuff and she can practically feel cavities manifesting in her mouth. “Bottoms up. Go on, it’s right up your alley, it’s made of produce and everything.”

 

“Basically a health food.” Betty nods resolutely, holding it up for a toast.

 

Veronica laughs, clinking.

 

Betty downs her drink and makes a truly hilarious face, like she just took a swig of expired milk chased with kerosene. “Let’s do this,” she orders as she hops off Veronica’s bed, teetering a little as she lands. She yanks at the short hem of her emerald-green dress, frowning. “I always feel out of place in heels,” she mutters.

 

“You realize we’re gonna look like hookers at Crow Bar,” Veronica points out.

 

“Oh, you’re very funny,” Cheryl says, rolling her eyes at both of them. “Shut up for a second; I’ll call a cab.”

 

She’s somehow more dressed up than Veronica's used to seeing her, which is saying a lot, her red hair loose down her back and an arc in her eyebrows that makes her look sort of mischievous.

 

It’s after ten when the cab drops them off, the short, stocky bouncer barely glancing at them before he waves them inside. The place is a dive that’s notoriously easy to get into even if you don’t have an ID, and for good reason: It’s dingy enough that no self respecting adult would ever want to hang out here, but still it's where pretty much everyone Veronica knows is tonight. She freezes for just one second in the doorway, and Betty slips her hand into hers and tugs her along through the crowd.

  
  
“Shots?” Toni asks, eyes wide and grinning. In the cab ride over here she offered Veronica both her drugstore brand lip gloss and some dried mango from her purse, friendly enough to make Veronica wonder if maybe friends other than Betty and Jughead aren’t totally off limits for her this summer, even ones as improbable as Toni, Cheryl, and Josie. If maybe it’s okay to relax.

  
  
“Shots,” Cheryl echoes, and Veronica laughs, digging some cash out of her purse to hand to Toni. She can see Archie across the bar along with Kevin, Moose, Valerie, and Melody, their faces lit by the blue-red glow of a neon sign attached to the wall above their heads. After a moment they catch her looking: Kevin waves and Valerie tips her beer in not-quite-friendly recognition, but Archie just stares at her, eyebrows raised, before saying something Veronica can’t make out to Kevin and disappearing toward the back of the room.

  
  
Josie heads over to say hello to them. Toni and Cheryl weave their way to the bar. Veronica scans the crowd for another moment, spotting some faces she recognizes and more who clearly recognize her -- a few girls who used to be in her classes, and Tina Patel in a slinky black top. She stops and blinks when her gaze lands on a girl not two feet away from where she's standing, bronzish hair and pink lips, pale freckled skin. Ethel’s dressed in a long skirt and ballet flats and a loose cardigan with a button up underneath, and she’s frowning.

  
  
Veronica gasps. She can’t help it, like seeing a bear while you're camping or the feeling of tumbling off a cliff right before you wake up. Ethel was totally straightedge in high school, didn’t drink or smoke at all. Crow Bar is the last place Veronica ever expected to see her.

  
  
Looks like the feeling is mutual; her eyes widen when she notices Veronica, like maybe she thought her _welcome home fuck you_ campaign was enough to keep her in the house for longer than this. Then she sighs. “Bitch,” she mutters, just loud enough so Veronica can hear her. She sounds profoundly annoyed, like she’s irritated at having to expend the energy it takes to hate her, like it’s a game Veronica keeps making her play even though she’s bored.

 

Now, standing here in the middle of Crow Bar at the beginning of their first summer after college, Ethel tilts her wrist so that the contents of her beer glass tip right down the front of Veronica's dress.

  
  
For a second Veronica only just gapes at her. They've got a little audience by now, the half-dozen people standing in their immediate vicinity, plus Betty and Cheryl, who’s crossed the bar like some long dormant sense was tingling in her brain stem. “Jesus, Ethel,” Cheryl says, grabbing Veronica's arm and pulling her back like she thinks maybe Ethel’s about to do something worse. “What the hell?”

  
  
Veronica can feel the scorching heat through her whole entire body, the cold shock of the beer where it’s soaking through her dress. She shakes Cheryl off. “Let go,” she manages, more sharply than she means to. She stares at Ethel, her body trembling with rage. She feels almost disconnected from her body, her fingers curling in slowly to make a fist. The adrenaline hits her like a rush, leaking into her brain until she’s almost lightheaded. She feels more powerful than ever, but at the same time, exposed -- like a cold sensation registering over her entire body. Then, as Ethel turns around and before anyone can stop her, Veronica launches herself at the back of her receding figure.

 

She's ready to do _something_ , punch Ethel or stomp on her foot or pull her hair out by the roots, but before she’s even made it halfway to her, two arms wrap tight around her waist and pull her back _hard,_ effectively yanking her away from Ethel before she can so much as brush her fingertips against her.

 

She fights to get away but the arms stay firmly around her and Ethel bolts away and disappears into the crowd.

 

“Veronica, stop!” says a voice in her ear, and she has a delayed realization that Archie is the one who’s holding onto her, and she finds herself giving up, breathing hard, her hair hanging in her face. Once she’s calm, Archie turns her around to face him.

 

“You’re lucky I stopped you before security could step in and get you arrested for assault,” is the first thing he says, and she rolls her eyes. He has his hands on both of her elbows and he’s leaning down so he’s at eye level with her. “Are you okay?” he asks next.

 

“Yeah,” she says breathlessly, her energy already spent. “Archie--” She can see Betty and Cheryl watching her from behind Archie with concern. All she wants is to shut her eyes and be as far away as humanly possible, but if she can’t have that then she wants her penthouse bedroom, the big gray blanket and the comforting turn of pages from the book in her lap. She wants to go home. “I’ve gotta -- I mean, this was -- I need to go.”  
  
“What just happened?” That’s Toni, coming up behind them and bumping Cheryl’s hip with hers, five shots of something amber in her hands and some orange slices she stole off the bar for a snack. Her eyes widen when she sees Veronica’s shirt, alarmed. “Did Ethel do that on purpose?” she asks.   
  
Cheryl shakes her head. “Don’t ask.” Then, taking two of the shot glasses out of Toni’s hand and holding one out to Veronica like she never said anything about leaving: “You ready?”

 

Archie looks at her the whole entire time. “Do you need me to take you home?” he asks quietly, eyes trained on hers.

  
  
She stares at him, and then back at Betty and Toni and Cheryl, Josie joining them -- improbable teammates after everything that happened, but here they are. She can’t hide forever. “No,” she says finally. “I’m okay.” She redirects toward Cheryl as Archie lets her go and says, “Ready.”

 

* * *

 

 

They order shots of fireball whiskey and drop them in glasses of hard cider, a trick Reggie taught her that tastes like apple pie: “Apples are the theme of the night,” Toni observes. “Abraham Lincoln would be so pleased.” Then, off their blank stares: “You know, cause of the apple tree?” she asks, looking back and forth between the four of them. “He couldn’t cut it down? Or he cut it down and couldn’t lie about it?”

 

“It was a cherry tree,” Veronica says at the same time Josie points out, “It was George Washington.”

 

All five of them find this hysterical, for some reason, clustered around a table in the far back near the jukebox, doubled over giggling. “Are we dancing?” Betty asks when the music changes over to the Whitney Houston they plugged in with their fistfuls of quarters. “I’m pretty sure I was promised dancing tonight.”

 

“Oh, we’re dancing.” Cheryl grabs Veronica by her wrist and pulls her into the crowd.

 

She laughs as she threads through the crush along with them, shaking her hair and letting Josie twirl her around, Toni singing along like they’re still in Veronica's room and not in a bar full of people. She feels like she's having two separate nights, though, like she's only half present: The urge to look for Archie is constant and physical, like an itch on the bottom of your foot when you can’t take your shoes off, or a tickle at the back of your throat.

 

They head to the bathroom after another round, snaking through the crowd one after another. “How you doing?” Cheryl asks Toni, bumping their shoulders together as they wait in the long line. It smells like a sewer. “You holding your liquor?”

 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Toni says. She leans across the puddle filled counter and peers at herself in the cloudy mirror, wiping away the mascara that’s migrated down underneath her lash line. “I think that's probably enough alcohol for me tonight, though.”

 

Josie and Betty head to the bar while Cheryl and Toni use the bathroom, and Veronica weaves her way back to their table in the corner and people watches for a while. She glances at the beer clock on the far wall.

 

* * *

 

The girl at the front desk has her break at three-thirty, so Veronica offers to cover, straightening her ponytail and her Riverdale Inn name tag both. She checks in a family with three triplet girls, all blond and bespectacled, and a pair of paramedics who spend a lot of their time on the Hudson and wanted to try a different river for variety’s sake. Their two redheaded toddlers climb on the leather couches, all dimpled arms and legs.

 

The couple who comes in behind them is older, a guy in khaki shirts and a sun-leathered woman in a brightly colored parrot t shirt, a plastic tote bag with hula girls, and lime-green flip flops on her feet. “Welcome to the Inn,” Veronica says as she hands over her credit card.

 

The woman ducks her yellow-gray head forward conspiratorially, like they’re old friends. “Maybe you can tell me,” she says, voice lowered, just-between-us-girls. “Does Jughead Jones really live in this town?”

 

Well.

 

“He does,” Veronica confirms, trying to keep her face neutral. She fishes their keys out of the cubby behind the desk. “You a fan?”

 

“Oh, the biggest,” the woman assures her. “Have you read _Riverdale_? I cried for two days. And you know it's all based on real people.” When Veronica turns back around she’s leaning almost all the way over the desk as if she thinks Jughead is possibly crouched back here, hiding. She shakes her head. “It’s heartbreaking stuff.”

 

“Terrible,” Veronica agrees, her whole body heating up like a torch held to copper, like if you looked at her from above she might seem to glow. This is the worst part, she reminds herself, working to keep her face impassive. Except for all the other worst parts. “So sad.”

 

The woman takes her room keys and her bloated looking husband and heads upstairs, finally, leaving her alone in the lobby. She holds one palm to her flaming cheek, unpins her name tag with the other. _Veronica_ , it reads in big block letters, innocuous, anonymous enough that the woman with the parrot shirt probably didn’t even think to look.

 

That’s when she turns and sees Cheryl.

 

“Don’t,” Veronica says, holding her hand up. She’s hovering in the doorway that leads to the office in her flip-flops. Veronica has no idea how long she’s been there, but from the look on her face she can tell it’s been long enough. “It’s fine.”

 

“I wasn’t going to say a word,” Cheryl says, and something in her voice telegraphs she’s serious, that she probably would have brought that particular exchange to her grave. She nods at the coworker who’s done with her break and is crossing the lobby to reclaim her post. “Was gonna take my break, though. You wanna come for a walk?”

 

Veronica opens her mouth to refuse her, then closes it again. “I -- sure.”

 

They wander out onto the back porch, down the crooked wooden steps to the pool level. It’s overcast today, just a couple of little kids gallantly dog-paddling their way across the shallow end, teeth chattering and lips tinted purple. “We used to be just like that,” Cheryl says, gesturing with her chin. “Me and Jason. And my cousin, too,” she shrugs. “We’d have swum in February, if we could.”

 

That makes Veronica smile. Cheryl’s never mentioned her cousin before. “Is this cousin older or younger?”

 

“Older,” Cheryl tells her. “He was at NYU like you, actually, so I got to see him pretty often. I just graduated from Barnard, so it was pretty close.”

 

“That’s cool.” They slip their shoes off and sit down on the concrete edge of the pool, dangle their feet into the chilly water.

 

“Uh-huh,” Cheryl says, reaching down to skim a leaf off the surface of the pool. “I had to promise Toni I wouldn’t stop shaving my armpits once I got there. I really liked their econ program, though.”

 

Veronica looks at her. “How is that a thing you knew you wanted to do?”

 

She shrugs. “I’m good at math,” she says. “I’ve always been good at math; I was doing my parents’ bills since I was eleven. And I like international stuff -- like, how what happens in one country money-wise affects what happens in another country.” She grins. “I get that that’s, like, really boring to most people, don’t worry.”

 

“No, it’s not at all. I’m super impressed.” Veronica shakes her head a bit and picks at a place where the caulk is peeling on the side of the pool, making a mental note to tell the maintenance guys about it. Cheryl leans back on her palms, turning her face up like she’s trying to wring sunshine out of the clouds. “Did you ever feel like you were interested in anyone else while you were away without Toni?” Veronica asks, then immediately feels awkward about it -- feeling intrusive and not even knowing why she’s asking, exactly. “Sorry.” She looks down at her feet. “That’s totally weird and over the line.”

 

Cheryl shakes her head. “No, it’s fine; I’d be curious, too. But I always just kind of knew she was the one for me, so it never even occurred to me to look for anyone else.” She wrinkles her nose a bit. “What about Reggie?” she asks. “Is he cool with your ex boyfriend’s reappearance in your life?” she asks Veronica. “As long as we’re, you know, being over the line?”

 

That makes Veronica smile -- it _is_ weird, no question, but in some strange kind of way she appreciates it. “Sometimes he is,” she tells her, “and sometimes he isn’t.”

 

Cheryl nods at that, seemingly unbothered. “Sun’s coming out,” is all she says.

 

* * *

 

Archie shows up at the Inn again that evening, a cardboard cup of coffee in one hand and his phone in the other.

 

“Hi,” she greets. “You here for Toni and Cheryl again?”

 

“And Josie, uh huh,” he nods, takes a sip of coffee. He takes a seat on one of the couches and looks over at her. “Kevin’s having a party.”

 

“Kevin,” Veronica says. “Wow. How is he?” She thinks back to how her friendship with Kevin started to get slowly bleached out over their senior year. After Archie’s dad died it was like he and all of their friends swerved in completely opposite directions, like they were never quite travelling in the same car after that. She remembers when Reggie’s dad died their freshman year -- his personality only seemed to get bigger, his cockiness more exaggerated, like if he was surrounded by his friends 24/7 it meant he never had to be alone. Archie was the exact opposite. He didn’t want anything to do with anybody who hadn’t known Fred well, didn’t want to go out or hang out or do much of anything besides sit in his bedroom alone or with Veronica, the two of them wrapped up in their own private world. Betty would drop in and watch movies with them sometimes, but for the most part it just felt like other people didn’t understand.

 

“His _dad_ died,” Veronica said when Kevin complained that she was blowing him off.

 

“Yeah, like a _year_ ago,” he countered.

 

She didn’t know how to reply to that. She was aware of how his aloofness was perceived by everyone else, but she never felt that way, never felt shut down or locked out and cut off by him -- after all, she was the one he trusted. She was the one he let in. It never felt like she was stuck.

 

At least until the moment that it did.

 

It was a few weeks after her meeting with the recruiter from NYU; the woman had emailed Veronica to let her know again how nice it was to meet her, and she’d written back asking a few more questions. She hadn’t brought it up with Archie again, which felt uncomfortable, like walking around with an itchy tag at the neck of a cheap t shirt. It was weird, feeling like she had something to say that he didn’t want to hear about. That had never happened before.

 

They were on the couch in his living room on a late Friday afternoon. Archie’s mom had moved back to Riverdale to take care of him, but she was at work, and Betty was in the backyard with Vegas. He was kissing a trail down the side of her neck, fingers at the hem of her shirt, and every inch of skin he touched felt exhilarating and icy hot.

 

“What do you think?” he murmured. “You wanna go upstairs?”

 

She pulled back, rolling her eyes. “Yeah, right,” she laughed a little. “Betty is here. I’m going to the bathroom.”

 

“Okay,” Archie smiled back. “Do you have chapstick?”

 

“Why?” she asked, getting up and looking down at him over her shoulder. “Too much kissing?” She grinned. “It’s in my bag.”

 

“Uh huh,” he shook his head, still smiling. “Thanks, love you.”

 

She barely even noticed he’d said it, it was so natural and such a common phrase between them. He loved her. She rounded the corner into the hallway, confident that he did and he always would.

 

When she came back a few minutes later, though, his darkened expression threw her into sudden doubt. “What’s this?” he asked quietly, holding up the printed out sheet of Veronica’s email exchange with the recruiter that she had tucked in her bag and intended to show her mom this weekend. “Are you going?” he asked. “To New York?”

 

“Archie, no,” Veronica said, wanting to calm him down quickly, to get back to how it felt before. “Probably not, I mean--”

 

“ _Probably_ not?” he repeated. “Veronica, you can tell me if--”

 

“I wanted to tell you!” she exclaims. “I wanted to talk to you about it, but I just--”

 

“Thought you’d hide it from me for a week instead?”

 

“Hey guys,” Betty said, appearing in the doorway and rapping her knuckles on the frame like she knew she was interrupting something but wanted to let them know she was there. “You ready to go?”

 

“Shit,” Veronica said, glancing out the window. They were supposed to go watch Kevin in his wrestling match at seven. The three of them were going to ride together. “We have to go, huh?”

 

“We have some time,” Betty assured her.

 

Veronica looked from her to Archie’s stony expression, back again. “I know, but I told Kevin we’d go early.” It was a Friday game and Betty had made posters for them to wave around in support; they’d made plans to go to Pop’s for pancakes afterwards. It had been a long time since they’d gotten their group all together, and it was a weird ache Veronica had begun to feel, like she missed her friends even though they were right there where they’d always been. Like she was getting ready to leave already. She took a deep breath and turned back to Archie, putting a hand on his shoulder in a silent plea, a telepathic, _can we please table this for now?_

 

“How about we skip it?” Archie asked, crossing his arms. He was wearing the hoodie Veronica loved, gray and soft from a hundred cycles in the washing machine.

 

“Skip it?” Veronica repeated, mirroring his posture, crossing her arms defensively. “Why would we skip it?”

 

“I don’t know,” Archie said, glancing at Betty. “You guys don’t think it sounds stupid?”

 

Veronica blinked. “I… no, actually. I kind of want to go.”

 

“I kind of really want to stay here.”

  
“You guys figure it out, okay?” Betty said kindly, smiling a little, probably hoping they’d cool down quickly. “I’m gonna bring the dog inside.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Veronica said, perching on the arm of the couch. “For not telling you about NYU.” She hoped that would fix it for now, that they could have a fun, normal night.

 

“I just think it’s so boring,” Archie said instead, ignoring what she’d said about NYU, like they’d moved on to another conversation entirely. “I think it’s so stupid to go cheer for a team I don’t care about while I’m surrounded by people I don’t like. I don’t want to go.”

 

Veronica did a double take. “They’re our _friends_ ,” she said. “Since when do you not like our friends?”

 

“I like our friends fine,” Archie replied, shrugging. “I don’t know.” He picked up the remote and started flipping through the channels. “Look. They’re showing The Lion King. How can you say no to that?”

 

“Archie,” Veronica laughed, a little uneasy. He was kidding but also not, wanted her to ditch their friends so they could stay here tonight. They’d spent any number of Friday nights like that, and for the most part she didn’t mind, but suddenly she felt like screaming.

 

Archie looked at her and sighed. “Fine, Ronnie,” he said, picking up his keys just as Betty walked back into the room.

 

“You guys figure it out?” she asked.

 

“Yeah,” he replied, already headed for the front door. “Let’s go.”

 

Now, standing in the lobby of the Inn, Archie says, “Kevin is fine. He and Moose are engaged, too, actually.”

 

 _Engaged, too_. That’s the closest Archie has come to bringing up Veronica’s relationship with Reggie since the night of his party. She wonders what it means now, that he’s slipping it into their conversation so easily.

 

“That’s--” Veronica begins, stacking up a couple of papers, when suddenly Reggie himself comes strolling through the doors. He looks impatient and mildly pissed. “Hey,” Veronica says, a little confused. “I’m not off for another--”

 

“I’m not here for you,” Reggie interrupts, barely glancing at her.

 

Veronica raises her eyebrows. “Oh,” she says. She notices that he’s carrying a coat in his hands. She notices that Archie is watching him carefully. “Then why are you--”

 

“I’m here for Josie. She left her jacket at Pop’s earlier today and I’m here to give it back to her.” He says it in a tone that’s noncommittal as anything, but it feels like ice over Veronica’s skin.

 

“Why--” she begins, and finally Reggie whirls on her, making eye contact for the first time.

 

“Jesus Christ, Veronica, can you not make a federal fucking case out of it? Yeah, I was at Pop’s with Josie.” His voice is all venom, and he huffs out an irritated breath.

 

That makes Veronica mad, that he would talk to her like that in front of Archie. That he would talk to her like that at _all._ She feels her cheeks heat up, embarrassed and angry. They never fight in public.

 

Except that apparently now they do.

 

“Fine,” she says, smiling and tightening her ponytail. She’s not going to let either of them see that she’s upset. “Go find Josie, then.” She leaves the front desk and heads for Emme’s office, away from both of them. She keeps her spine as straight as possible as she goes.

 

She halfway down the dimly lit hallway when she hears Archie say, “Ronnie!” behind her, and she stops dead in her tracks, taking a deep breath. She turns around and he’s standing at the end of the hall. Behind him, the lobby is empty, Reggie probably having gone out to the pool to find Josie.

 

“Yes?” she asks. She clutches her stack of papers to her chest, defensive. “What is it?”

 

He just stares at her for a long second before he asks, “Are you okay?”

 

She’s surprised he’s asking. She’s surprised he isn’t speaking in the caustic tone he’s been using on her all summer, that he even cares enough to come after her. She shrugs. “It’s not your problem,” she says stiffly.

 

He looks at her for another brief moment before he quietly says, “No. I guess it’s not.”

 

Veronica turns around again and keeps walking until Emme’s office door shuts firmly behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reminder that you can find me on tumblr as vaarchie and twitter as vaarchies. I'd love to know your thoughts and hope you have a wonderful week! xo


	8. Chapter 8

All anyone has been talking about for the last week is going to River Bend together, so Archie suggests they all ride up together -- he and Kevin and Moose and Josie and Cheryl and Toni all climbing into his private limousine to make the drive up to the mountains, the long, windy road they’ll be on for over an hour and a half. He doesn’t even have to worry about the ride being boring because everyone in his friend group is a talker and almost immediately they’re all engaged in a cheerful debate over who’s going to get the most drunk this weekend. And it’s good, because they scarcely notice Archie’s terrible performance at contributing to the conversation -- he’s too busy wondering if the next few days are going to be painfully awkward, some weird blast from the past or flashback to when they came here in high school, a disaster with everyone he knows there to witness the carnage.

 

Veronica seemed surprised and hurt by Reggie’s appearance at the Inn last night, and he thinks about that as he stares past Toni’s head, out the window at the green pines whizzing by, wonders if he should have done more to try and help her.  _ Not your problem _ , her voice echoes in his mind. But maybe he should have insisted. Maybe he should have told her it wasn’t her fault that Reggie was acting like a dick -- but isn’t that the way that Archie himself has been treating her this whole summer? He swallows a little. It’s not often he admits to himself that he’s an asshole, and he almost never does it out loud, but it seems the truth is staring him right in the face this time.  _ She’s the one who left _ , taunts the grating voice in the back of his mind.  _ She doesn’t deserve your pleasantries. You told her Reggie was a jackass, she can make her own decisions. _

 

He looks over at Josie and swallows down the questions burning on the tip of his tongue.

 

“Where are you, Andrews?” Moose asks, laughing and jostling Archie a little with an elbow to the ribs. “Are you down here on Earth with us, or not so much?”

 

“He had a late night,” Josie teases. “That girl you took home from the bar seemed nice,” she smiles innocently, and Archie rolls his eyes good naturedly.

 

“She was  _ really _ nice,” he confirms, laughing. “And what about you?” he inquires. “How’s Liam?”

 

“Liam’s great,” she says coolly. “He’s not coming to River Bend until tomorrow though. He has to work, which is like--” she sighs. “Doesn’t Veronica make the schedule at the Inn?”

 

Archie shrugs his shoulders probably a little too quickly, but it doesn’t really matter because Cheryl immediately jumps in with, “Not for the kitchen! Just like, the front desk and stuff.”

 

“Sure, sure,” Josie smiles, moving on to a different topic. Kevin responds eagerly to whatever she says, his face lit up like Christmas morning and all of them laughing, the sound of it full and filling the space they’re sharing.

 

Archie stares around at his friends, always equal parts surprised and thankful to have them. These are people that he shut out for the most part his last three years of high school, the grief and pain of losing his father all too raw and encumbering for him to see past, like he was swimming in an endless blurry river for months on end and doing his best just to keep his head from going under. And yet, they’re the same people he found solace in the summer Veronica left -- they welcomed him back with open arms, the whole lot of them taking long drives out to the coast, camping together, bonding in ways that Archie had missed with a deep seated ache in his bones and hadn’t even known it. There were moments he spent with them where he felt like it was possible his life  _ wasn’t _ coming to a halt, even back then.

 

A lot of the time he feels nothing but resentment and anger when he thinks about that summer -- how Veronica vanished and he visited his dad’s grave every morning on his runs, breathing in the oppressive humid air, how numb and desensitized he felt toward everything. Now, though, as he looks around his car at the friends he never knew he really needed -- the friends he might never have reconnected with had it not been for the events of that year -- he can’t help but feel anything other than boundlessly happy.

 

* * *

 

Reggie didn’t come home last night until after Veronica fell asleep, and he was already up by the time her 5 AM alarm went off, sharp and blaring on the bedside table. She rolled over on her bed into vast empty space and cold sheets, confused and disoriented for a moment before she remembered what happened with Reggie at the Inn. She dismissed the alarm. She found Reggie in the living room, both of them in a soup thick morning fog, and they barely said one word to each other besides his, “Are you ready?” and her, “Yeah. I think I’m gonna ride up with Betty and Jughead if that’s okay with you.” He shrugged like  _ whatever you want _ and that was the end of that.

 

Now she leans her head back against the cool seat in Jughead’s car and listens to him and Betty chatter up front, content to hear them getting along so well, proud of how easy things are between them, happy for their successes even as is it seems her own relationship is crumbling.

 

She’s wearing a vintage scarf over her head like she’s Elizabeth Taylor in some old movie, dark sunglasses obscuring half her face. She’s too ritzy for camping but she’s always loved doing it anyways -- it was her idea to start coming to River Bend in the first place, back in high school. Betty is talking about how she babysat her niece and nephew a few days ago, how Juniper loves to paint. Neither she nor Jughead pried for information over why Veronica wasn’t riding with Reggie, and she’s thankful for it, but a tiny part of her sort of wishes they would -- she wants to spill it all out, wants to stare at it and sort it out and ventilate all the insane feelings she’s been having.

 

Instead, they stop for gas at a gross station off the side of the woodsy road, watching cars speeding by with their camping gear packed high. They’re all headed for River Bend; it’s going to be busy this year. Veronica watches Reggie’s car go by, but the windows are far too darkly tinted for her to catch a glimpse of him as he passes. She swallows back the lump in her throat and links her arm through Betty’s as they wait together in line for the unsavory bathroom.

 

“Can I tell you something?” she asks. Her heart flutters nervously inside her ribcage.

 

“Of course you can.” Betty turns to look at her, her face just as kind and open and caring and gentle as it’s always been. Her best friend.

 

Veronica smiles a little and squeezes her arm softly. She  _ knows _ she could tell her, is the thing. She knows Betty would sympathize with her over what happened with Reggie at the Inn. She knows Betty wouldn’t judge her, wouldn’t look at her differently, for the thoughts and doubts she’s been having about everything in her life. She knows Betty would understand. But what comes out instead is, “You seem really happy.”

 

Betty blinks a little, surprised. “I do?” she asks quietly, unsure, like no one’s used that word to describe her in a really long time. Like Veronica’s incorrect. Like someone pronouncing your name wrong.

 

“Yeah,” Veronica smiles. “You do. That so hard to believe?”

 

Betty glances across the way toward Jughead where he’s pumping gas. He catches her gaze and grins, raising his hand to wave to them. “No,” Betty says, looking at Veronica and smiling back at her. “I guess not.” Then her face changes a little, concern knitting her eyebrows together. “But V, I should tell you -- don’t take this the wrong way, let me know if I’m overstepping, but --  _ you _ don’t really seem that happy.”

 

Veronica takes a breath, averting her gaze and avoiding Betty’s. At this point, just thinking about meeting up with Reggie at River Bend makes her stomach flip unpleasantly. She wishes she could just stay with Betty and Jughead, here at this gas station -- being out here with them actually makes her feel happy she decided to come this weekend. Happy she decided to return to Riverdale at all. She’s worried that this feeling is going to disappear when they get to the campsite, and it makes her desperate to hold onto it, like it’s already fleeting and she has to focus hard on not losing it.

 

The gas pump shuts off with a noisy thunk. “I’m happy here with you,” Veronica says finally, tipping her face up towards the sunshine.

 

* * *

 

River Bend is in full swing when they arrive, the whole campsite crowded with people. When Veronica gets out of Jughead’s car she sees Archie standing with his friends over by one of the picnic tables, and he’s got a red plastic cup in one hand that he raises to her in greeting when he catches her eye. He doesn’t smile, but he also doesn’t look annoyed to see her, so at least there’s that. She can’t say the same for some of the other people who see her closing the car door and grabbing her suitcase out of the trunk.

 

“V,” someone calls to her, and she turns to see Reggie walking toward her, and feels like her skin is lighting up in a way that could hardly be described as pleasant. Before they got back to Riverdale the sight of him used to make her feel calm and safe and loved. Now she feels dread in the pit of her stomach and thinks, not for the first time, that this town is cursed, that only bad things thrive here. Reggie reaches her and holds his hand out to take her suitcase. “Let me carry it,” he says.

 

She blinks up at him and swallows, handing it over. As soon as he takes it he puts his other hand on her back and she immediately flinches away from his touch. Both of them stare at each other for a moment, Veronica shocked at her own reaction. “Sorry,” she mumbles, immediate and quiet. “Sorry, I--”

 

“Babe,” he says, and now he’s looking at her with the smallest hint of fear in his eyes. Veronica has almost never seen him look afraid before, and it sets an instinctual sort of panic churning inside her, like there’s something destructive coming that she needs to brace for. “Can we talk? I-- we need to talk.”

 

“I know,” she whispers, her eyebrows turning up. She keeps her eyes right on his face, doesn’t want anyone else to see her like this, vulnerable and scared like a child. “Please.”

 

Reggie puts his hand on her back again, and this time she leans into the touch, taking a breath. “Hey,” he says, warm and comforting, the tone he only uses on her, his voice cracking a little.  _ I’m here. _ “Let’s go somewhere private, okay?” He’s staring right back at her like the two of them are the only people on earth, and for a moment she thinks maybe they are, the noise of the campsite fading out and everything around them unimportant. He swallows a little, an action so small that Veronica wouldn’t even notice it if she hadn’t spent the last three and a half years doing things like memorizing every bit of him, deciphering what his every inconsequential gesture means.

 

When he starts to guide her forward she follows, and he takes her over to the tent he’s already set up, opening the flap to let her go inside before him.

 

* * *

 

“I’m sorry,” is the first thing Reggie says once he’s followed her inside and zipped the tent up, the two of them hidden from the rest of the world. He sits down across from her. “I’m sorry for treating you the way I did last night -- I mean, I’m sorry for the way I’ve been treating you for the last few weeks, really, but I was way out of line last night.”

 

Veronica nods. “Yeah,” she says quietly. “You were.” She remembers this time when they were in their third year of college and they were walking over the Brooklyn Bridge and it started to pour rain all at once, clouds darkening the sky like something out of an apocalyptic film. Reggie carried her all the way over the bridge just so she wouldn’t have to mess up her shoes, sweeping her off her feet and smiling while she laughed, tilting her face up as the rainfall washed over them both. As soon as they got to some place warm and dry, he held her face in his hands and kissed her, and in that moment it felt like nothing in the living universe could ever ruin what they had. Like they were unbreakable.

 

Now it feels like they’re one wrong move away from shattering into dust.

 

“I know you want to know about why I was with Josie at Pop’s,” Reggie says, and Veronica hums in agreement. He pushes a hand through his hair nervously. “And I swear to you, nothing happened. We didn’t even plan to be there together. We just ran into each other.”

 

“How did you get her coat?” Veronica asks.

 

“We ate together and just did some catching up,” Reggie says without hesitation. “And then she left but she forgot it in the booth.”

 

“Why were you so mad when you showed up at the Inn?”

 

Reggie swallows a little. “We--” he pauses. “I mean, one of the things we ended up talking about at Pop’s was our engagement.”

 

“And?” Veronica presses quietly, thinking maybe this is it. Maybe this is the moment where Reggie admits he doesn’t want to marry her anymore and she gets to start her life all over again, back at square one with every possibility in the world in front of her. That thought -- and her suspicion that she might be secretly wishing for it -- terrifies her right down to the core of her being. For the last three and a half years, they were everything to each other. The idea of losing him in any capacity is unimaginable.

 

“And she told me you seem sad,” he says softly, avoiding her gaze. “She told me you don’t seem happy.” He looks back at her again, into her eyes.

 

She says nothing.

 

“We started arguing about it,” Reggie admits. “She said I was doing the same things to you that I did to her when we were dating -- like, not respecting her feelings or being honest, or whatever.” He shakes his head. “So I got mad and she stormed out and when I got to the Inn I was just too afraid to face you. Too afraid that Josie was right… that you’re not happy with me. So I just want to tell you that I’m sorry, V. And from now on I’m going to do everything I can to be worthy of marrying you.” He reaches out to hold both her hands in his, his thumb brushing over the engagement ring on her fourth finger. “I don’t think I’ve been doing a very good job of it lately.”

 

Three months ago, he kissed her on top of the Empire State Building and told her he loved her more than he knew how to describe.

 

“Okay,” she says quietly.

 

Reggie breathes out, relieved. “I miss you,” he tells her.

 

“I miss you, too,” she says, and realizes all at once that it’s true. She thinks about them in New York City, sitting in coffee shops and huddled in dark pulsing bars, riding the ferry past Ellis Island with the lights of the city winking over the water behind them. What have the two of them been trying to do? Prove that they don’t deserve to be happy?

 

He leans forward to kiss her, and she lets herself sink into it.

 

* * *

 

An hour later, they’re back outside, and the air is laden with the smell of weed and sunscreen and grill smoke. Sweetwater River stretches all the way up here in the mountains, and there are people lounging around on the rocks in their swimsuits, other people strumming on guitars. Veronica and Reggie are sitting with Betty and Jughead playing poker with crumpled dollar bills at one of the picnic tables. Kevin and Moose are playing too, having wandered over from their campsite down the way -- even Archie and Josie are joining in.

 

When they came over, Josie hugged Veronica tight and smiled at Reggie. Veronica looked at Archie and said, “Hey,” making a point of it. They said they’d all try to be friends, after all.

 

Archie just looked at her, even. “Hey, yourself,” he said, so quietly that only she could hear.

 

Now Archie lays down three tens, which is a winner, all of them grumbling good naturedly and setting their cards down on the table as he says, “Thank you, thank you,” in a grand voice, reaching in to collect his winnings from the center with silly, exaggerated movements.

 

“Oh, no, wait up a second,” Betty says, pointing. “Reggie’s got a full house, doesn’t he?”

 

Reggie looks down at the table at that, surprised. He’s been playing absentmindedly, no doubt, one hand on Veronica’s knee and lost in his own world while the rest of them hang out on earth. Then he smiles. “Oh, hey. Yeah, I do,” he says, reaching in to take the money. Then, suddenly, Archie stops him. 

 

“Hold on a second,” he says, shaking his head. “Isn’t that how we play, though? You don’t notice, you don’t take the pot?”

 

Reggie makes a face, like,  _ nice try. _ “I don’t think so, Andrews.”

 

Archie frowns, staring at him. “I’m just saying, you’re barely even playing. You needed someone else to tell you that you’d even won.”

 

“Yeah, okay, but I  _ did _ win,” Reggie says, and now Veronica can hear the edge creeping into both their voices, something you wouldn’t even notice if you hadn’t spent so many years with both of them. But Veronica  _ had _ spent years with both of them. She shifts uncomfortably, not liking the trajectory here.

 

Archie laughs a little, mirthless and mocking. “Dude, it’s like twenty bucks we’re talking about here.” He shakes his head like Reggie is being stupid.

 

“Dude, it’s like, my twenty bucks.”

 

_ Shit, _ Veronica thinks. Reggie mimics Archie’s tone exactly, which she knows is one of the easiest ways to piss him off. Sure enough: “I never thought Veronica would get engaged to someone this hard off for cash,” Archie shrugs, venom dripping from his words.

 

Immediately, Veronica grips Reggie’s forearm. “Shut  _ up, _ Archie,” she says. Reggie is far from broke -- in fact, Veronica had been shocked when she found out how much money he actually had from his dad’s inheritance, and his job back in New York is well paying enough that he has the freedom to take the entire summer off -- and she’s positive Archie knows this. She’s positive that this argument between them is about a whole lot more than twenty dollars in ones.

 

_ "You didn’t win, bro, _ ” Reggie says, and Veronica winces. “I know that’s really hard for you to grasp now that we’re back and it contradicts your entire understanding of the universe, but--”

 

“It contradicts my understanding of the universe to be a little bitch about everything, yes,” Archie interrupts.

 

“You want to talk about who’s being a little b--”

 

“I forgot my sunglasses in the car,” Veronica announces, standing up so suddenly that she almost turns the table over. “I’m going to go get them.”

 

“Ronnie,” Archie begins, sounding irritated. “You don’t have to--”

 

“No, no, it’s fine,” Veronica says, getting off the bench. “I’ll be right back.” It’s running away, she knows it is, but sitting here listening to them argue? She can’t do it. She doesn’t have the stomach. She needs to go.

 

“You want some company?” Betty asks.

 

“Nope, I’m good.”

 

She takes off quickly, and on her way to the lot she passes by Cheryl and Toni. “Hey Veronica, you want a drink?” Cheryl asks. She almost accepts, but instead she just shakes her head and makes her way out to Jughead’s car, grabbing her sunglasses and sitting on the bumper for a minute, catching her breath.

 

Things seem to have calmed down by the time she gets back to the campsite. Archie is gone and so is Josie. Kevin and Moose are over by one of the grills and Betty and Jughead are down at the dock, the playing cards forgotten at the center of the table. Cheryl and Toni have wandered over, and Reggie breaks away from the herd when he sees Veronica coming.

 

“Hey, you,” he says, putting one arm around her shoulders and steering her toward the opening between the trees that leads down to the river. “You get your sunglasses?”

 

It’s sort of surprising to her, how he seems happy to brush off the scene she just walked out on. “Yeah,” she says, holding them up to show him, and then: “Everything okay?”

 

“What?” he asks. “You mean because of Andrews? He was just being an asshole.”

 

Veronica hums noncommittally, reaching up to lace her fingers through his as they join Betty and Jughead on the dock and lay out in the sunshine on the warm, smooth wood.

 

* * *

 

That night they all sit around the fire drinking and laughing; Veronica can’t help but notice that Archie is conspicuously absent, but tries her best to push it out of her mind.

 

Veronica is coming back from the bathroom when she runs into Josie standing near where their tents are, arms around herself and looking confused. “Where’d everybody go?” she asks. She smells like booze and bug spray. “I lost everybody.”

 

“They’re still back over by the campfire,” Veronica tells her. Then, looking a little closer: “You okay?”

 

Josie shakes her head. “I’m fucked up,” she says bluntly. “ _ Ohh, _ Veronica, I am fucked up.”

 

“You are, huh?” She’s feeling a little buzzed herself, to be honest, the few drinks she had singing through her blood and brain and bones. “Hit it hard?”

 

“Too hard,” Josie confirms. “Yeah. I don’t really feel too good.”

 

“Okay,” Veronica frowns. She takes Josie by the arm and steers her toward a nearby picnic table. “Just sit for a second, okay? I’ll grab you some water.”

 

“No!” Josie exclaims, taking Veronica’s hand. “No. Don’t leave me. Please.”

 

Veronica sits beside her, surprised and a little alarmed. “Okay. You’re okay.” New plan, then. “I’m not going anywhere.” She’s squinting through the darkness to see if she spies anybody from their group when all of a sudden Josie is up off the bench.

 

“Nope,” she says. “ _ Nope _ , nope, I’m gonna--”

 

From the green, panicky look on her face it’s pretty clear what she’s going to do, even when she doesn’t finish the statement -- Veronica doesn’t see a garbage can anywhere nearby, so she takes Josie by the shoulders and steers her toward a clearing that’s not too close to anybody’s tent. “Right there,” she instructs, basically forcing her to bend down, arranging her limbs like she’s a doll. “You’re okay.”

 

She keeps saying it over and over while Josie’s sick --  _ you’re okay _ \-- rubbing her back a little. It feels like it goes on a long time. She actually  _ really _ hates the sound of throw up -- like, it pretty reliably makes her gag -- but it’s not like she’s going to wander away and leave her, so she looks around at the trees and tries not to listen too closely.

 

“Oh my God,” Josie says when she’s finished, standing upright and wiping the back of her hand across her mouth, eyes red-rimmed and face puffy. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Don’t tell Reggie, okay? Please don’t tell Reggie.”

 

That makes Veronica take pause. “Reggie wouldn’t care,” she assures her finally, peeling a loose strand of hair off her forehead. “He’d just want to make sure you’re okay. But no, of course I won’t. You wanna go lie down?”

 

Josie falls into Veronica’s arms, and she doesn’t even realize she’s crying until she says, “Liam called and broke up with me. It’s okay. I need water.”

 

Veronica nods. “Okay,” she says, “Come on.” She leads her back to where their stuff is, digging around until she finds her big plastic water bottle and handing it to Josie. “Drink it slow,” Veronica says, not wanting her to get sick again. Josie nods obediently and swallows it down before climbing into her tent and passing out fully clothed on top of her sleeping bag. Veronica refills the water bottle and sticks it in there with her for later. Her hangover is going to hurt.

 

Veronica heads back toward the campfire and Archie is the first person she sees, staring into the low burning embers like he’s trying to solve a mystery, the light of the flames flickering over his serious face. His dad used to build fires just like this one in their backyard, inviting them and their friends to sit around while he told elaborate, involved stories. Archie and Veronica would eventually fall asleep side by side on those nights. They sat side by side at Fred’s wake.

 

She’s not sure if Archie sees her or just senses her, but after a moment he turns to look at her and raises his hand to wave to her. She stands there, looking at him and remembering, wondering what would happen if she walked over and sat down beside him.

 

Wondering what would happen if she leaned in and kissed him goodnight.

 

God, what is her problem? She  _ just _ made up with Reggie. She shakes her head once to clear it, embarrassed. She raises one cautious hand and waves back.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This and the next two chapters are some of my favorites in the story so far and I'm really excited for you all to read them! If you want to chat about this fic or anything in general, you can find me on tumblr as vaarchie. I'm also on twitter as vaarchies. I hope you have a great week and let me know your thoughts on this chapter! xo


	9. Chapter 9

The next morning, Veronica and Betty try to make coffee over the campfire and it ends up being totally disgusting and undrinkable, so finally they cave and Veronica grabs Reggie’s car keys so they can make the twenty minute drive to the nearest small town. She orders a cup for him too and waves it under his nose in the tent they’re sharing until he wakes up when she and Betty make it back.

 

“You’re my hero,” he tells her, and she laughs.

 

A couple hours later, Josie is taking it easy, predictably -- she’s pretty much restricted to her sleeping bag with a bottle of water and a bag of pretzels -- but the rest of them hike until their blisters are bleeding, until it feels like the mountains are out for their blood: Archie has a run in with some poison oak, and Jughead gets stung by a wasp. Veronica scrapes her knee as they climb over a fallen tree and swears to anyone who will listen that she’s done with outdoor activities forever.

 

“I’m serious,” Veronica tells Betty as they trek back down the mountain, her hair falling out of its messy bun. “As soon as we get home I’m getting in bed and never coming out again.”

 

“Sounds like a great plan,” Reggie says cheerfully from up ahead, looking over his shoulder to wink at her. Veronica raises her eyebrows for a moment before she and Betty descend into slaphappy laughter.

 

“You can always count on Reggie,” Betty says, practically doubled over, amused. It’s been a long time since the two of them laughed this hard together -- since high school, definitely -- and Veronica’s not sure if they’re just exhausted or what, but this almost makes the scrape on her knee worth it.

 

Josie has perked up enough by the time they get back that she comes over to the campfire for lunch. While Reggie makes hamburgers and hotdogs, Josie lines up the buns on the table in neat, symmetrical rows.

 

“Feel better?” Veronica asks her, coming over to grab a plate, along with one of the notable brownies Toni made. Josie nods quickly, reaching out to let Reggie slide one of the burgers onto the plated buns she’s holding. She smiles at him quickly, and Veronica feels her face doing a weird thing and wills it not to. “Good!” she says brightly. _You’re welcome,_ she thinks nastily. “I’m glad.”

 

She eats slowly and thoughtfully until Reggie wanders over and takes a seat beside her, one arm slipping around her waist. He has a bag of trail mix in the other hand. He smells like grill smoke and fresh air, and Veronica’s distracted thoughts evaporate like steam off a damp hot sidewalk as she leans into his side.

 

Reggie rattles the bag to let some of the trail mix fall into Veronica’s palm, and she wrinkles her nose. “Are you being stingy with the M&Ms?” she asks.

 

“I’m not!” Reggie swears. “That was pure happenstance. Apparently the universe thinks I deserve the M&Ms,” he grins. He reaches into the bag and pops one into his mouth, then hands some to her. “You feel okay?” he asks.

 

“Yup,” she says brightly, and then, suddenly and instinctively, “ _Ouch._ ” She jumps up quickly, leaning down. There’s a stinging pain coming from her ankle, and already there’s an angry red welt forming right on the point of her bone.

 

Reggie leans forward to inspect it. “Ouch,” he agrees, and then looks around at the ground, searching for a culprit. “Looks like some kind of bug bite. Did that just happen?”

 

Veronica frowns and rubs hard at her ankle. “Uh huh,” she says. Then, “See?” she asks grandly, rolling her eyes. “Tell me I don’t look like I’m having the time of my life.”

 

There are people staring over at them, a cavalcade of faces that are familiar to Veronica after years of school events and summer get togethers just like this one, graduations and ski trips, the annual pool party at Cheryl’s mansion. Looking around at them feels like being advanced by an army of people who are all four years older than they are in her head. She swallows.

 

The weird, sweet truth though, is that no one here at River Bend seems particularly interested in her one way or another. No one sticks their leg out to trip her and laugh. No one throws a wasp hive into her tent.

 

“Calamine lotion,” comes a voice behind her, and she turns to see Kevin standing there, holding out a pink bottle. “It’ll stop the itching,” he informs her blatantly, and then stands there for another moment before he finally smiles a little sheepishly. “How’s it going, V?”

 

“Kevin,” Veronica breathes out, smiling back after a second. “I-- Hi. I’m good,” she says, and then, “You know, the bug bite situation notwithstanding.”

 

Kevin laughs a little. “Moose and I are going to take the boat out in a few minutes, if you want to come with,” he informs her. “You too, Reggie,” he says, throwing him a glance. “Betty’s already on board with her new boy toy famous author.” When they were in high school, Veronica spent a countless number of nights over at Kevin’s house, sleepovers with Betty and big fancy breakfasts in the morning. They told each other their secrets under the cover of darkness. They took his dad’s police car out for a drive in the dead of night once, accidentally turning on the siren and making the car on the road ahead of them think they were getting pulled over. They were best friends.

 

She never thought she’d get another chance at that again, but here it is. “Of course, Kev,” she says, hugging the calamine lotion close. “Absolutely.”

 

…

 

It’s been a long time since Veronica got on a boat -- since before high school, definitely -- but she feels excited more than anything else, taking Reggie’s hand and stepping up onto the small deck, sitting down on the white ottoman in the center.

 

“Let’s set sails,” Kevin says grandly, “even though this is a motorboat.”

 

Veronica grins as the boat starts moving out toward the center of the river. Jughead is standing over by the railing and Betty is sitting to Veronica’s left; she leans over, resting her head on the blonde’s shoulder. “How’s it going?” she asks quietly.

 

Betty takes a moment to answer, but when she does, the smile is obvious in her voice. “Good,” she muses. Veronica sits up to look at her, gaze questioning. Then, “Well,” Betty adds, lips twisting, the sun catching golden threads in her hair, “Jughead and I shared a tent last night,” she says softly.

 

Veronica sits up even straighter, her eyebrows rising. “Betty, what?!” she says excitedly, which earns her a gentle elbow to the ribs and a hissing _shh._

 

Betty grins. “All we did was sleep, I promise,” she swears.

 

Veronica puts a hand over her own mouth to keep from squealing -- seriously, like they’re in middle school and Betty’s crush just told her he _like_ likes her. It’s almost just too shocking to her -- that the two people she’s been friends with the longest are actually becoming a _couple_ \-- and she wonders what would have happened if she had arranged more than one meet up between them back when they were in high school. If they would have noticed each other then. If Jughead would have been able to keep Betty from leaving home, would have been able to keep her grounded and brave in the face of the animosity plaguing her.

 

Then again, Archie wasn’t able to stop Veronica from running for New York when everything went down.

 

And then again, maybe the timing for Betty and Jughead is more important and ideal than she might realize.

 

Betty looks at her now, her eyes shining, and laughs. Veronica laughs with her, delighting in the sunshine and the gentle rocking of the boat underneath them, of Reggie laying back and slipping an arm around her while she reaches out to take hold of Betty’s hand.

 

“Will you be my maid of honor?” she asks softly. It’s not something she’s actually really thought about, to be honest -- she hasn’t been interested in planning the wedding _at all,_ is the truth -- but sitting here, floating on Sweetwater River in the middle of the summer, Veronica realizes that the only person she wants to fill that role is Betty. Not any of her NYU friends, or any of her superficial cousins. Just Betty.

 

“Oh, V,” she says now, her features softening. She tilts her chin down and squeezes her hand, smiling at Veronica like she hung the damn moon. “I’d be _honored._ ”

 

Veronica smiles back, her heart bursting with all the joy she’d expected to go along with an engagement, pulling Betty in for a hug while Reggie sits up, smiling. “Great,” she says happily, chin on Betty’s shoulder, laughing.

 

Kevin smiles. “This is so exciting,” he says. He peers over at them. “Speaking of, are you two ready for married life?” he asks. And then, at Veronica and Reggie’s surprised expressions: “Oh, no worries if you’re not. I’m pretty sure Moose has been thinking about running out on me before the big day, anyway,” he grins, which earns him an eyeroll and a smile from his fiance.

 

“Married life,” Veronica repeats, laughing a little nervously and pulling back from Betty’s embrace. She smiles over at Reggie, and he slips his arm around her a little tighter, leaning in to kiss her temple. It’s not that she’s been avoiding thinking about weddings or marriage or anything like that, but now that they are -- talking about it out loud and casually chatting with another engaged couple, asking her best friend to be her maid of honor -- Veronica can suddenly see the path to the rest of her life narrowing starkly in front of her, and it makes everything feel abruptly intense.

 

Thankfully, Reggie saves her from having to answer. “If married life means living together and assuring everyone of our lifelong devotion, I think we’re kind of already doing that.” His arm is warm against her shoulders, and she sighs happily, relieved.

 

“Pretty much,” she agrees. “Shouldn’t be too much different.”

 

“Except of course for the honeymoon,” Reggie winks. “I think that’ll be pretty different.”

 

“Ooh,” Betty says. “Where are you guys going?” She has a twinkle in her eye, like she’s really excited for them. Back on the river shore, people are laughing, and it feels like this conversation is happening really far away from reality.

 

“We haven’t actually decided yet, have we?” Veronica says, looking up at Reggie.

 

“Uh, nope,” he says. “But we could go somewhere exotic, like… Sri Lanka.”

 

“Oh, I’ve been there,” Jughead pipes up. “I had to sit in my rental car for an hour waiting for an elephant to get off the road.”

 

“Delightful,” Veronica says at the same time Betty says, “Really?”

 

Veronica smiles at that. She remembers when she and Reggie were just like that, wanting to know every last detail about anything the other had to say. He wanted to know all about her childhood. She wanted to see everything he’d seen.

 

She and Archie were like that too, once upon a time.

 

“Have you picked a venue?” Moose asks. “And a date?”

 

“It better not be November 25th!” Kevin says cheerfully, pouring himself a drink. “That’s our date.”

 

“We haven’t,” Veronica says quickly, suddenly feeling embarrassed. Why haven’t they discussed these things at all? An engagement means an inevitable _wedding_ , which isn’t going to arrange itself.

 

“We just like telling people we’re engaged for the discounts,” Reggie jokes, and everyone laughs, but Veronica can sort of sense the shift in his demeanor, too, like he’s just now realizing the gravity of their promise to each other.

 

Veronica’s shifts her fingers, and her ring glints, reflecting the sunlight so harshly she thinks it may be about to blind her for one endless moment.

 

…

 

Everyone comes to the campfire that night, and after roasting hotdogs, Kevin announces they should all play spin the bottle. Veronica immediately glances over at Archie, but he’s staring into the flames.

 

Cheryl wrinkles her nose up. “Everyone here is engaged,” she points out. “Or, like, about to be, right?” She winks at Toni.

 

“I’m single,” Josie says gloomily.

 

“Come on!” Kevin exclaims. “No one’s _married_ yet, and I think we’re all comfortable enough in our relationships that it shouldn’t matter, right?”

 

Veronica shifts uncomfortably, glancing up at Reggie. “I mean,” he asks her quietly, “What do you think?”

 

Veronica shrugs. “I don’t think so,” she mutters, looking down.

 

Reggie leans in closer. “Huh?” he asks. “I didn’t--”

 

“It’s settled, then!” Kevin exclaims. “We’re all playing. Let’s go.”

 

Veronica sighs and follows after him, pulling Reggie along by the hand.

 

“First up,” Kevin says once they’re all gathered around a picnic table under the glow of a lamp up above, “Josie? It’ll help with the heartbreak, maybe.”

 

Josie crosses her arms defensively. “I’m not going first,” she says stubbornly. She’s done a good job at hiding her feelings for most of the day, but it looks like she’s getting tired of the emotional work it takes to fake being fine now that the sun has been down for hours. It makes Veronica’s heart hurt for her again.

 

“I’ll go,” Toni announces. “Spin.”

 

“That’s the spirit,” Kevin says, and sends the glass bottle whirling. “Wow,” he says when it finally slows down and lands on Cheryl. “Seriously?”

 

Cheryl grins brightly. “Even this stupid game knows we’re meant to be,” she says delightedly, and pulls Toni in for a kiss.

 

“Who’s next?” Kevin asks, and when no one volunteers, he says, “Okay, we’ll go in a circle. Archie, you’re next to Toni, so it’s your turn.” Archie nods in disinterested surrender, and Veronica’s heart instantly starts pounding. No matter who the bottle lands on, this is not going to end well for her, it’s not --

 

Kevin spins the bottle. Veronica watches it go around and around in circles, her own panic as physical as dizziness, and she feels like it goes on for hours. Finally, just before the bottle can slow to a stop and point to God knows who, she throws her legs over the side of the bench and runs as fast as she can, toward the trees.

 

When she thinks she’s far enough, she stops and sinks down against the bark of a tree, breathing hard, her head between her knees. What the hell was _that?_ She can still feel the wild racing of her own heart, the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She has no idea how she’s going to explain this to Reggie.

 

She hears a pair of footsteps running towards her through the sparse leaves and branches on the ground, but she doesn’t look up until she hears Betty’s breathless voice. “V?” she asks, collapsing down next to her. “What happened?”

 

Even after everything, she still doesn’t want to say it. Instead, Veronica turns toward her and wraps her arms around her tightly. “Betty,” she sighs, “I think I’m losing my mind.”

 

Betty rubs slow, comforting circles into her back. “You want to talk about it?” she murmurs soothingly.

 

“Not really,” Veronica breathes out, resting her forehead on Betty’s shoulder, but then she does it anyway. “I’m just so tired of feeling so conflicted,” she says, “about _everything._ ”

 

Betty doesn’t say anything for a second, but then she quietly asks, “About Archie? And Reggie?” Her voice is gentle and unintrusive, like if Veronica doesn’t want to answer she’ll back off, but if she does -- this is her chance, and she won’t be judged or ridiculed or made to feel guilty.

 

Veronica closes her eyes. This feels eerily similar to their sophomore year, when Veronica was the one doing the comforting after Betty’s dad was revealed to be the Black Hood. It throws things into sharp clarity -- that she’ll probably never have a better friend, someone who cares about her so selflessly. “No,” she whispers. “Just about… how I’m supposed to feel and act around everyone, now that we’re all suddenly reunited after four years,” she tells her, which isn’t technically a lie.

 

Betty nods against Veronica’s hair. “I feel the same way,” she admits. “It still scares me, wondering if everyone is just looking at me as the daughter of a serial killer.”

 

“Well you are definitely much more than that,” Veronica pulls back, smiling weakly. “You’re my best friend,” she says sincerely, and realizes all at once that it’s true. Even after all these years, Betty is her best friend, the best she could ever dream of having.

 

The blonde smiles and pulls her back in to hug her again. “You want to tell everyone you got sick and came out here to throw up?” she offers kindly, and Veronica laughs.

 

“That sounds great,” she says, and sighs one more time before getting to her feet and pulling Betty up along with her.

 

…

 

Archie slaps Jughead on the shoulder once Spin the Bottle breaks off, Veronica nowhere in sight. Her sudden run for the hills is definitely not something he can let himself get preoccupied thinking about, nevermind the fact that it’s nagging at his brain with the intensity of a blaring alarm. “Shakespeare,” he says. “Walk with me?”

 

Jughead nods, a look of vague surprise on his face. He glances over at Betty. “I’ll meet you back at the tents?” he asks, and at Betty’s nod, he follows after Archie, toward the river. “What’s up?”

 

“I know we’re all technically on vacation and don’t want to be thinking about work,” Archie begins, “but I just wanted to check in with you and see how things are going with the Southside. You know, as far as eradicating the drug problem.”

 

“Yeah,” Jughead nods quickly, scratching at the back of his neck. “Honestly, there hasn’t been much word yet from the private investigators; I don’t think they’ve found anything. They were questioning a couple people who they thought might be dealers, but they couldn’t confirm anything.”

 

“They sound like lousy investigators,” Archie says bluntly. “I want to help.”

 

Jughead stops and looks at him, confusion etched into his expression. The river flows noisily behind them. “You do?” he asks.

 

Archie shrugs. “Of course I do. Riverdale is my home, too. Or did you think I was a soulless monster who hid in his mansion and let his community descend into a disaster area around him?”

 

Jughead laughs a little, clearly still apprehensive. “A little bit,” he admits, and then, “Obviously I’d love any help I can get. Did you have something in mind?”

 

“Fire those investigators and I’ll put my own team on it,” Archie tells him. “The best money can buy.”

 

Jughead raises his eyebrows. “Really?” he asks. “You’d do that?”

 

For one second Archie honestly feels bad. He almost wishes he could just let Jughead keep this crusade up, but that’s clearly out of the question. “I’d be happy to,” he says with as much sincerity as he can muster up.

 

Jughead’s face breaks into a big smile. “That would be great,” he says earnestly. “Thank you so much.”

 

...

 

“You should pay them,” Reggie argues later that night, sprawled on the grass on the damp ground. A couple of fireflies flicker lazily in the pine trees. “They’re doing a job, they should get paid.”

 

“They’re college athletes!” Veronica says stubbornly. “You get a scholarship, that’s the compensation. If you don’t go to class and _use_ it, that’s--”

 

“You can’t go to class and use it!” Reggie fires back. Veronica likes this, arguing with him good naturedly. He’d accepted her excuse for running out on Spin the Bottle without question; he’d even offered to drive into the nearest town to find aspirin for her. “You’ve got practice, like, eighty hours a week; the coaches actually _tell_ you not to study and focus on your games.”

 

Veronica makes a face. “I got paid eight bucks an hour to swipe cards at the student center at school,” she tells him, warm ankle nudging against Reggie’s. “You want to pay them eight bucks an hour?”

 

“Maybe!” he says, laughing. “Better than not getting paid at all.” Then he grins, ducking his face close to hers in the darkness. “This is a stupid argument,” he decides, bumping their noses together. “Let’s make out instead.”

 

“You wish,” she tells him, climbing up onto her knees so she can reach over him and grab the bag of gummy worms he brought her -- the movement ignites a searing ache in both thighs, though, and she groans a little bit.

 

“Easy, tiger,” Reggie says, reaching for the bag himself and handing it over. “Hiked pretty hard, huh?” he asks, pulling her calves into his lap and squeezing. She smirks at him in the blue twilight and keeps quiet, tilts her head back and enjoys the view.

 

A million stars blaze bright above their heads.

 

...

 

Someone announces they need firewood early the next morning, and Veronica and Archie volunteer to go gather at the exact same time, so they head out into the wood together; it’s easier to keep up with him than she expects, the rhythmic thud of rubber shoes on earth and the breath steady in and out of her lungs. They’re halfway around the curve of the river when Archie stops cold.

 

“I was trying not to lose you,” he says suddenly, and from the tone in his voice she know he’s been thinking about it for longer than since they came out here to collect wood. “That’s why I was such a dick about NYU. I was trying not to lose you.” He shakes his head. Then, before Veronica can process what he’s saying: “But I lost you anyway.”

 

“You didn’t,” she blurts out, fast and immediate. She’s breathing hard, from the trek through the branches or from something else. “You didn’t lose me, I’m right here, I--”

 

“Ronnie.” Archie screws up his face a bit, like, _It’s me, please cut the crap_. “You moved all the way out of the state to get away, you know? And now you’re engaged to fucking Reggie Mantle.” He scrubs a hand through his red hair. “That’s a thing I knew, too, by the way. That he liked you. He liked you for a long time.”

 

Veronica blinks. She thinks about Reggie back in high school, how he was always around them even if she wasn’t thrilled about his presence. “You did?”

 

Archie shrugs his broad shoulders, rolls his brown eyes. “Everybody knew,” he says.

 

“I didn’t.”

 

“Yeah.” He glances out at the river, back at Veronica, out at the river again. “I know. And I didn’t want you to find out.”

 

“Why?”

 

Archie lets out a breath. “Trying to stave off the inevitable, I guess. I don’t know.” He sounds annoyed that she’s making him talk about it, like he’s not the one who brought it up to begin with. “But Reggie’s Reggie.”

 

“What does that mean, ‘Reggie’s Reggie’?” she asks, although she already kind of knows what he’s getting at. If she was smart she probably wouldn’t push it.

 

“Veronica--” Archie breaks off, irritated. It’s a humid day, and his tan skin is damp with perspiration. He’s standing so close she can feel the heat. “I don’t know. Forget it. Can we just go?”

 

 _Did you think I wouldn’t want you if I knew I could have Reggie?_ she wants to ask him. _Did you worry I was settling for second best?_ “Talk to me,” she prods him. “Whatever else happened, you used to be able to talk to me.”

 

“I used to be able to do a lot of things,” Archie snaps, a flash of temper. “Can you leave it?”

 

“No!” she exclaims. It feels like they’re tossing a bomb back and forth, like Hot Potato, like neither one of them wants to be the one left holding it when it explodes.“Tell me.” Then, when he doesn’t answer: _“Archie.”_

 

 _“Ronnie.”_ Archie’s eyes are darker than she’s ever seen them, that fleck in the iris like the North Star. “Let it go, okay?”

 

Things get weirdly quiet then, the trees and the river and how empty it is out here, no tourists or anyone to see. Archie’s face is tipped down close to Veronica’s. He wants to kiss her, she can tell he does, both of them standing here practically panting. He wants to kiss her so, so bad.

 

She knows because she wants to kiss him, too.

 

“We should go,” Archie says, shaking his head and turning away from her. He takes off so fast Veronica loses her breath.

 


	10. Chapter 10

It’s early the next afternoon when Reggie comes over to tell her that they’re all about to play frisbee and asks her if she wants to come, and she shakes her head, suddenly exhausted -- the heat, maybe, or the overwhelming feeling of being with everyone again, the same as they used to be and different all at once. “I might just nap,” she tells him, then immediately feels guilty about it -- he’s putting the effort back into their relationship, shouldn’t she do it too? “I mean, unless you want me to? I can rally.”

 

Reggie doesn’t seem bothered, though: “Nah, take a rest,” he says, planting a casual kiss on her forehead. “We’re gonna do the campfire thing again tonight, it’ll probably be another late night.”

 

“Okay,” she tells him, tilting her face up so his next kiss lands on her lips instead of on her forehead. “Just for a little bit.”

 

She borrows a big flowered sheet from Betty and lays out in the sunshine, nevermind the fact that it’s the middle of the baking day. It takes her a long time to get comfortable. She can’t stop thinking about a time, years ago, when she and Archie went on a date with Reggie and Josie out to the beach.

 

It was early spring still, the air getting chilly as they got closer to the coast, the evening sky all hues of pink and orange. The sand was empty; no one really wanted to be out here at a time like this, but there the four of them were, slipping off their shoes and racing down to the water’s edge in the purple darkness. She remembers Archie picking her up, her legs hooked around his waist as he kissed her, waves crashing around his ankles. She remembers Reggie telling Josie he loved her, no hesitation at all even though they weren’t alone. She remembers thinking, very clearly: _I’ll never be happier than I am right now._

 

They ate a late dinner at a little restaurant on the boardwalk that night, brightly lit and welcoming even to them and their salt water soaked clothing. They laughed the whole entire time; Veronica and Josie weren’t thinking about which of them would get to pick their next performance piece or who would be in the front of their next cheer routine; Archie and Reggie weren’t concerned with who would make more touchdowns at their next football practice. They were all just friends, and pairs of lovers. They never could have imagined just how drastically everything would change for them.

 

…

 

When Veronica wakes up on Betty’s flowered sheet, the first thing she notices is the roasting sensation all up and down her arms and legs, on the tops of her feet, on the bridge of her nose around her sunglasses.

 

The second thing she notices is Archie.

 

“Ronnie,” he says, looming above her so his face is blocking the sun. He nudges her ankle with his shoe until she startles, sitting up fast and disoriented. Everything stings.

 

“Why’d you wake me up?” she asks drowsily. “Where is everyone?”

 

“You’re frying,” Archie tells her, not particularly friendly. “Come on. You need to put sunscreen on, get in the shade or something.”

 

“Oh,” she says. She’s got that underwater post nap feeling where you’re groggier after than you ever were before. She’s eye level with his knees and it occurs to her to wonder how long he’s been standing there by her, and what he was thinking as he did. “Okay.”

 

“Here,” he says, holding a bottle of sunscreen out to her, the pads of his thumbs brushing hers. By the time she gets it together enough to look up and say thank you, he’s already gone.

 

…

 

There’s a concert that night along with the campfire, the crashing of drums and the echo of guitars through the mountains like a call and response from another lifetime.

 

That night she gets to the tent after Reggie, and he reaches for her almost as soon as she’s inside, one hand in hers and tugging her down into the soft pile of their sleeping bags, pulling her oversized t shirt up above her head. His lips brush over her sunburned skin, her shoulders and her neck. “That hurt?” he murmurs.

 

She lets herself sink into it a little. “Doesn’t hurt,” she promises. She closes her eyes, feels his hands and his mouth and the familiar hum he turns up in her body. She wonders if his intimacy was the same with Josie when they were together, if the two of them moved faster or slower than she and Reggie had, than she and _Archie_ had, even--

 

_Stop._

 

“I can’t,” she blurts out, sitting bolt upright with such force that she pretty much shoves Reggie right off of her. She puts her shirt back on rapidly, her face flushed red. She doesn’t completely know how to follow it up, how to explain that it’s her and Reggie in this tent and Josie and Archie in their tents just a few yards away, and that everything feels too close, too connected. She and Reggie have done this so many times before that maybe tonight shouldn’t be any different, but it just is. “I’m sorry,” she tries, “I just--”

 

“No,” he says, and his voice is almost stoney. “Don’t say you’re sorry.” He shrugs, and then says, rather abruptly, “Maybe we need some space.”

 

Um. “What do you mean? Like, we should take a break?”

 

“Just for a little while, I think,” he says without looking at her, and then, “Don’t you agree? I’m gonna go take a walk.”

 

“Okay,” she mutters even as her heart pounds in her throat, pulling her blanket up around her shoulders. She feels weirdly exposed all of a sudden. She watches Reggie unzip the tent flap and disappear out into the darkness. Then she sighs loudly and grabs her toothbrush and gets out herself, heading for the bathroom.

 

She tells herself there’s nothing to feel strange about all of a sudden, that she’s cranky and uncomfortable because of her sunburn and sleeping on the ground for two nights. But then she’s coming back from the campground bathroom with her toothbrush in one hand and rubbing her opposite arm with the other -- it’s cold, this high up in the mountains, goosebumps rising up on her skin -- and she sees Reggie holding the flap of Josie’s tent open for her, letting her climb on in ahead of him. She can’t hear what he says to her, but she hears her full body laugh in response, slightly muffled as Reggie zips the tent closed.

 

Veronica breathes in sharply, hit all at once with the strong instinct to yell out, _Stop,_ like seeing someone about to step in front of an oncoming car or put their hand down on a hot burner. Like she’s trying to stave off some disaster; except, she supposes, the person who’s about to get hurt is her. She waits for some sense of overwhelming devastation to drown her, but instead it feels like a chilling confirmation of something she’s already known for awhile, a validation of the weird, sick anxiety she feels all the time, like something bad is perpetually about to happen. Like she’s going to lose him either way.

 

She turns on her heel, a headache pounding hotly against her eyelids. She walks past the campfire which is finally starting to die out -- only Cheryl and Toni are there now, sitting in chairs and looking utterly relaxed. Toni is leaning forward a little, looking at the fire, and Cheryl is paging idly through a magazine, her legs stretched out and crossed in Toni’s lap. They look like they belong together. They look like they _fit._

 

She realizes a second too late that Archie is still out too, and she nearly crashes into him as she speeds down the dirt path, her shoulder hitting him hard as he says, “Whoa, you okay?” He motions for her to stop, and she might have, maybe, except that suddenly she has this awful tightness in her throat that suggests she’s about to cry.

 

“I’m great!” she calls over her shoulder, making a beeline for the docks. God, what is wrong with her?

 

She rushes through the heavy darkness and toward the river, breathing hard once she reaches the deserted docks. She stares up at the sky, black like ink, and collapses down hard on the edge of the wood, crossing her legs and looking down at the water.

 

Her heart is pounding wildly, adrenaline pumping. Now what?

 

She’s managed to take a few breaths by the time Archie appears beside her, a soft “Hey,” falling from his lips, and then the movement of air as he sits down next to her on the dock. “You want to try that again, maybe?” he asks quietly.

 

“Not really,” she answers, which is the truth. She doesn’t look at him.

 

She sees him nod, out of the corner of her eye. For a moment they just sit there in the silence, and then he asks, “Remember when we came here, sophomore year?” Veronica can hear the smile in his voice, and all at once she wants to look at him: shock, maybe, surprise over the fact that he’s talking to her this easily, that he’s not putting up a barricade of indifference and barbed remarks with her on one side and him on the other. “And we got in the canoes and raced against Kevin and Betty?”

 

“I--” Veronica starts, and now she really does look at him. _You don’t have to try to make me feel better,_ she almost says, but in the end she can’t will the words out of her mouth. It occurs to her that she doesn’t want to be alone: or that maybe she just wants him, period, in whatever capacity this is right now. “You tipped the boat.”

 

Archie laughs at that, his smile stretching wide and his eyes squeezing shut, tipping his head back towards the sky. For one insane moment he looks exactly like himself again, exactly who Veronica remembers -- for one moment he’s _her_ Archie again, innocent and good and unaffected by whatever’s happened over the last four years.

 

Even when he stops laughing he’s still smiling, looking at her in the night air, the river flowing quietly beneath the wood. “You okay?” he asks her again. His hand is close to hers, pressed against the dock. “You look like you’re falling off the earth a little bit over there.”

 

Veronica frowns a little. She hasn’t told anyone about anything that’s been going on with Reggie, not the fights or the suspicions or the reconciliations or the tears. She certainly hasn’t told anyone that he just put them _‘on a break.’_ She just keeps pushing it down and telling herself she has it under control, that everything is alright. Most of the time she’s even able to convince herself that nothing is as bad as she thinks it is. That she’s managing. She’s fine, in fact. She’s great.

 

Mostly.

 

Still, Archie knows her too well even now for her to pretend that everything is normal. She takes a deep breath. “Things have been kind of difficult between me and Reggie.”

 

“Yeah,” he says, looking down toward the water a little. “I could tell, sort of. Back at the Inn that night.”

 

“Uh huh,” she says, her head swimming. “Anyway, I guess I’ve been taking it sort of hard or whatever.”

 

“I mean,” Archie replies, “I’m not going to pretend I’m sad about you not being perfectly blissful with Reggie. But if it’s really hurting you, then--” he clears his throat. “Yeah. That sucks.”

 

“Yeah,” Veronica agrees, swallowing hard. “It does.” She thinks about the mess she left in the tent; she thinks of all the other messes she’s made. “Was I hard to be with?” she asks abruptly, before she can stop herself. “And to be around? Like, is that why we started fighting so much before we broke up? Was I just so exhausting after a while that--”

 

“Ronnie,” Archie says, reaching out and putting one hand on her arm, squeezing tight. “ _No._ ” He sits back then, shrugging. “Like, are you always a picnic? No, but nobody is. I for damn sure am not. And no one worth being with is.” He looks at her, his eyes wide and open. “And you are really, really worth being with.”

 

Veronica breathes in shallowly for a second, then looks away from him. “I’ve never felt so… so…” she trails off, frustrated by her own inability to put it into words, to explain it in a way that makes sense.

 

 _Alone,_ she guesses, is the right word.

 

…

 

“Ronnie,” Archie says, leaning forward to see her face again. “I’m going to ask you again, and I want you to tell me the truth. Are you okay?” She doesn’t _look_ okay, he’s realizing now, letting himself consider her full on: her cheekbones are more pronounced than usual, and there are shadows under her eyes. When he glances down at her hands, her nails are bitten down so far he winces. She’s beautiful -- she’s _Veronica,_ of course she’s beautiful -- but she also doesn’t totally look like herself.

 

“Yeah,” Veronica starts to say, nodding her head. She stops halfway through the gesture and shrugs her shoulders instead. “No. Probably not,” she amends, sounding really and truly irritated about it.

 

Archie nods, feeling his heart constrict in a way it hasn’t in a long time. “You want to tell me about it?” he asks.

 

Veronica stares over at him. “I will,” she decides. “But first, I really want to get drunk and look at the stars.”

 

That makes him laugh again, harder even than before -- there she is.

 

He stands, offering a hand to pull her to her feet. “Come on, then,” he says. “Let’s go see some fucking stars.”

 

She slips her hand into his and gets up, grinning. She pulls him down the dock, and he’s still smiling.

 

There she is.

 

…

 

Archie grabs some snacks and supplies and they pick their way across the campground, past parties still going strong and intense late night conversations happening outside of tents. By the time they’ve reached the clearing where the concert was earlier tonight, Archie has pushed the thought of Veronica and Reggie fighting resolutely out of his mind. This is what Veronica wants to be doing, hanging out here with him and these stars, and this is exactly where he wants to be, too.

 

They find a patch of grass and spread the blanket over the damp ground, leaning back to look up at the sky. They’re far enough from any real civilization that the moon looks like a spotlight, the constellations burning bright and visible above them. Veronica pulls a bottle of strong liquor out of her bag and drinks.

 

“This is the part where we talk about what insignificant specks we are compared to the universe,” Veronica informs him wryly, and he laughs for probably the millionth time tonight, because the truth is he’s really, really happy they came out here. “To being specks,” she proclaims, and takes another long sip.

 

It goes on that way for awhile, the two of them sitting there with the bowl shaped sky above them and Veronica drinking -- a lot, actually. Archie sips at his beer, but she’s really going in hard on the alcohol she brought out here with her, and if her tolerance is anything like what it used to be, well-- well. He glances over at her, eventually.

 

“Ronnie?” he says quietly.

 

“Yeah?” she asks, and just from that one word, he knows he’s right. She’s drunk.

 

All at once that realization makes him tense up. What could be so wrong, that she’d want to drink just so she didn’t have to think about what was bothering her anymore? “How you doing over there?”

 

Veronica doesn’t answer for a long time, and the silence seems to stretch out infinitely and straight up into outer space above them. Then it’s broken by her quiet gasping sob.

 

“Ronnie,” Archie says again, immediate, pivoting quickly to face her. “Hey, come on,” he says, reaching for her hands, but instead she pulls her knees up to her chin and wraps her arms tight around them, hiding her face and crying harder.

 

“It’s so hard,” she manages, her breath rattling. “Pretending--” she chokes on her own words and bangs her head lightly against her knees. “That--”

 

Archie swallows thickly. All he wants to do is comfort her. After everything they’ve been through and everything he failed to do for her in their relationship, this is how he shows up now. He has to.

 

He has an acute vision then, a memory so clear in its details that he swears it’s like it happened last week.

 

It was two weeks after his dad was killed, and Archie had become, for all intents and purposes, a shell of a human being. He had spent every day since the murder holed up in the darkness, staring at the walls -- he didn’t want to talk to anyone, but his mom was there anyway, and so was Veronica.

 

“Wanna take a drive to Pop’s?” he remembers her asking, sitting on the edge of his bed, one of her hands stroking over his knee as he laid there. “Get dinner?”

 

“Not really,” he said, pulling the covers more tightly around him. For the first week, his phone had been blowing up with condolences and empty reassurances, before he stopped checking it altogether. “Maybe tomorrow.”

 

“Archie,” Veronica tried again, her deep breath audible in the close, cramped air in the room. “You know I’m here, right? If you want to talk about things with me? Or if you ever wanted to talk to someone who wasn’t me, even--”

 

“I’m feeling great,” Archie mumbled into the pillows, interrupting. “Just tired.”

 

“Archie,” she said again, sitting there for a long time and then finally laying down beside him for the rest of the night.

 

So. His dad was dead. He felt like all his organs had been scraped out. He felt like the sun had gone out. But eventually he had no choice to be fine. It was fine.

 

He did not feel fine.

 

He missed being quiet with him. He missed his laugh. He missed his hugs and his advice and the steadiness of his best friendship but worse than all of that was the undeniable fact that some very important, tethered part of him had shut down when his dad died and now Archie seemed to be hurtling off through space at a million miles per hour, his oxygen tank rapidly emptying out.

 

His mind was a ceaseless churning, wracked by the feeling that something terrible was about to happen. He woke up sweating in the middle of the night. His jaw started aching, then his neck and the back of his head and his shoulders. His body felt a hundred years old.

 

Veronica gave him a couple weeks longer to sink further and further into himself before her visits started to involve iced teas and windows being flung wide open, perching on his desk with the ease and comfort of someone who’d been in his room more times than either of them could count.

 

“I have to fly to New York tomorrow,” she told him one day, sipping the last of her mint tea in the sunlight shining in and rattling the ice noisily. “For my aunt’s wedding. You should come with me to the airport if you’re feeling up to it. Get outside a little,” she added pointedly.

 

Archie considered it -- he hadn’t left the house in three full days -- but the idea of getting ready and heading all the way down to the airport just to stand in a crowded terminal and watch Veronica walk away and get on a plane that might just _crash_ seemed so profoundly difficult and terrifying in that moment that Archie was certain there was no way on earth he could go.

 

He scrubbed a hand through his hair, remembering his mom telling him he wouldn’t feel better by staying in all the time. He sat there in bed for another minute, debating, before finally sitting up and pushing a hand through his hair. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay. I can come.”

 

The next day they got on the train with Betty too -- Veronica had unceremoniously announced that she didn’t want to ride up with her parents _or_ their chauffeur --, found three seats together on the river side. Normally Archie really liked the train, the soothing rocking motion and the view of Sweetwater, but he’d had a gnawing headache since that morning; he’d chalked it up to garden variety dread, refusing to bail on Veronica even though he was dying to. Annoying as it was, he told himself firmly, his mom was right. He couldn’t expect to feel better if he stayed in the house all the time.

 

He sat back in his seat and looked out the window, half listening as Veronica and Betty talked about some new song on the radio; Betty had sent him a link to listen, but he’d never actually been motivated to do it. His vision was a little spotty, Archie noticed as he stared at a poster for a language immersion program. He blinked, then blinked again; maybe his eyes were tired? He hadn’t exactly been sleeping well lately. Maybe he needed glasses before he went back to school.

 

 _Shit_ , he did not want to go back to school.

 

Archie squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again: it seemed like maybe it was worse now, things going dark and blurry around the edges of his vision. It occurred to him that maybe this was more serious than just looking at his phone too much. God, what if there was something really wrong with him? He imagined it now, the doctor’s drawn face as he diagnosed cancer or lupus or some tropical disease Archie had never even heard of. What if he woke up one morning completely blind? What if he was going completely blind right now?

 

“Um,” he said quietly, though he wasn’t sure if he’d actually made any noise or not. He was vaguely aware of Veronica and Betty talking beside him, but all of a sudden it was like he was trying to hear them from the bottom of a well. It was really, really hot in there. Archie could feel sweat prickling under his arms and in the dips between his fingers; he sucked in a breath of close, stuffy air, but it felt like his nose and throat were stuffed with gauze. Was the AC broken? Jesus Christ, why was nobody else in here about to suffocate?

 

Archie put a hand on the seat in front of him to brace himself, dizzy. “It’s hot,” he managed to croak.

 

“It is?” Veronica looked over at him. Then she frowned. “Archie, hey; are you okay?”

 

“No,” Archie said flatly. How was Veronica even breathing right now? The blotches around the edges of his vision were more pronounced than ever; god, he could hardly see. “I need to get off the train.”

 

Betty’s eyes widened. Veronica sat up straight.

 

“Ronnie,” Archie said, loudly enough that the people in front of them turned around and peered over the seat in curiosity. “Please. _Now_.”

 

“Okay,” Veronica said, grabbing for her suitcase and motioning for Betty to slide out of the seat. “Okay. We’ll get off, okay? Come on.”

 

Archie was all but pounding on the doors by the time the train pulled into the next station in Greendale; he tumbled onto the platform, bending double and bracing his palms on his shaking knees. His hands and arms were numb up to his elbows. He didn’t think he could stand up straight. This was it, he thought, surprisingly clearly. His grief was finally going to kill him, and today was the day.

 

“Archie,” Veronica was saying, one hand on his shoulder. “Archie, I’m gonna call 911, okay?”

 

“No,” Archie said. “No, please don’t do that.” He didn’t want to see a doctor, to be poked and prodded and diagnosed and examined. He didn’t want anyone to look at him ever again. “Please, please don’t.”

 

He made it over to a set of concrete stairs leading to the parking lot, sat down and curled into a ball against the railing. He knew intellectually that Veronica was crouched next to him on the sidewalk, whispering calming, quiet nonsense into his ear, but all he could hear was the sound of his own iron panic, his poisoned blood speeding through his veins. How was he ever going to go back to school? How was he ever going to have a life? He’d thought he was handling this; he thought he had it under control instead of the other way around. But he’d been wrong. “I’m broken,” he whispered as Veronica rubbed his back and confused commuters swarmed all around them. “Holy shit, Ronnie, I’m so messed up.”

 

“You’re okay,” she whispered softly, and then: “I’m cancelling my flight.”

 

“What?” he asked. His heart was still pounding against his ribs manically. “No, Ronnie, you don’t have to--”

 

“Shh,” she said, slipping her arm through his and squeezing. In another minute, he started to calm down. “I know,” she murmured into his ear, just quiet. She rested her chin on his shoulder. “I know.”

 

…

 

“It’s so hard,” Veronica repeats now, every word shaking. Archie can’t even remember the last time he saw her cry, and it makes every instinct in him come to life all at once. _Protect her. Fix it._ “To feel lonely, even when I’m with him.”

 

This time, when Archie reaches out to touch her, she lets him. He puts one hand on her back and she slowly leans into him until she’s falling into his arms. “Hey,” he whispers, trying to sound soothing and not afraid. He wraps both arms around her. “Hey.”

 

She cries hard against his chest for exactly three more seconds, and then sniffles and sits up straight, wiping her eyes. “Forget it,” she says, and then, “Archie, I really, really do not want to be here right now.”

 

“You want to go back to your tent?” he asks. He could help her walk there. He’ll just have to hope Reggie isn’t there, and if he is -- well, he’ll just have to cross that bridge when and if he comes to it.

 

But: “No,” Veronica says firmly. “I don’t. I want to go back to Riverdale. I don’t want to be here for the last day tomorrow. I want to leave _now.”_

 

Archie swallows thickly. “You’re drunk,” he tells her.

 

“Not so drunk that I don’t know what I’m talking about,” she says seriously, staring him in the eye. “And I’m not kidding. I want to leave. If--” Now she pauses, looking a little embarrassed. “I mean, if you want to. You probably wanted to spend time here with your friends, now that’s I’m thinking about it.” She stares down at the ground, looking awkward and uncomfortable. “Um. Yeah. Sorry, that just totally went over my--”

  
“ _Ronnie,_ ” Archie says, setting a hand on her knee. She looks up at him with wide eyes, and he smiles at her a little sadly. “Let’s go,” he says. “Let’s go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Thank you for being patient after my week long break from updating. I'm back in school and adjusting to that but regular updates should be back from now on. I'll let you know if that changes. Thanks for reading and I hope you have a wonderful week! xo


	11. Chapter 11

Veronica writes a note out for Betty with the pen and paper Archie finds stashed in the limousine’s glove compartment; his driver looked none too pleased to be woken up in the middle of the night to give Archie the keys and learn that he’d have to wait for him to send another car up to take all his friends home the next day. Archie just mumbles, “That’s why I pay him,” and accompanies Veronica so she can slip her explanatory letter about her disappearance from the campsite into Betty’s tent. 

 

After that, she takes a deep breath and slides into the front seat of the limousine while Archie gets behind the wheel. “Last chance to back out,” he laughs a little, but she can tell he’s nervous: the two of them running away from this place and retreating to a town that’s familiar in its entirety, but sure to be completely alien now that no one they know is there.

 

She buckles her seatbelt and smiles at him just a little. She thinks of Reggie back in Josie’s tent. She thinks of every single time this summer she’s wanted to be near Archie. “No,” she says with finality. “I’m in this for the long haul.”

 

Archie’s eyes seem to glow as he smiles back over at her. “So am I,” he promises, and turns the key in the ignition.

 

…

 

They stop to eat at some random roadside diner forty five minutes into the drive -- they’d spent most of that time singing along to the radio at the tops of their lungs -- and inside, the restaurant is not unlike Pop’s. They find a booth and Veronica peers around at the rest of the scattered patrons, a woman reading a book with a mug of something steaming and a man using a rolled up newspaper to swat at a fly.

 

“So,” she says after they order, looking at Archie. “We haven’t really gotten to catch up, have we?”

 

Archie rearranges the salt and pepper shakers. Their waiter shouts something to the cook behind the counter. “Nope,” he says slowly. “We haven’t.” Then he looks up and smiles. “How was NYU?”

 

Veronica smiles back and suddenly wishes she hadn’t suggested catching up -- or rather, that she had suggested  _ he _ tell her everything about his life and let her keep her lips sealed about hers. “Everything I dreamed,” she says honestly, and that’s the truth: New York University was where she climbed the rungs of the ladder to get to everything she’d ever wanted.

 

Or, well.

 

Almost everything.

 

Still, she’s not quite sure how much she wants to talk about her alma mater with Archie -- after all, the idea of her going to NYU was what started most of their fights in the first place, and even now she's wary of saying the acronym out loud around him -- but he pushes her. “Really?” he asks, and for the life of her, Veronica thinks he looks truly and sincerely interested. Like he wants to keep listening. Like he wants to know everything she knows. “What did you major in?”

 

“Law,” she tells him, her heart starting to beat like wings in her chest for a reason she can’t put her finger on. “I was offered a job at a firm in the city. I start the first week of October.”

 

Archie raises his eyebrows and glances out the big plate glass windows, like he’s gesturing to the late June night outside. “You’ll be here that long?” he asks, and then, at the change in her expression, probably: “Oh no, I didn’t mean that in a bad way. I mean--” he clears his throat a little. “I mean I’m glad you’ll be here. Honestly I wish you were staying even longer,” he adds quietly, and then looks at her in alarm. “Sorry,” he amends quickly. “I didn’t--”

 

“It’s okay,” she assures him, a feeling like a faint buzz in her veins. “And no, actually. I’ll probably leave a few weeks into September to get settled into the new apartment and everything.” She smiles at the waiter who slides their food onto the table, big plates of pancakes and hash browns and scrambled eggs. “It’s near Central Park,” she tells him. “I know you always said you wanted to go there.”

 

Archie smiles a little, taking a bite of his food. “I did go there,” he says matter of factly, a gleam in his eye. “For New Year’s two years ago, with my mom.”

 

Veronica’s eyebrows practically shoot off her head.  _ And you didn’t tell me? _ is what she almost says -- absurdly, illogically -- but what comes out instead is, “Why?”

 

He scoffs a little. “She wanted to see the ball drop?” he suggests.

 

She backpedals immediately. “No!” she exclaims, pushing her food around on the plate nervously. “No, that’s not what I meant. Just-- I don’t know. Maybe we could have met up.”

 

It’s his turn to raise his eyebrows now. “Met up?” he repeats. “I don’t know, Ronnie. I mean, I was kind of embarrassed,” he mutters, like he really hadn’t wanted to say that and he’s annoyed she got it out of him.

 

“Embarrassed?” she echoes, confused. “About what?”

 

“About…” he mumbles and then sighs, setting his fork down and meeting her eye. “Listen, Ronnie,” he says steadily. “I’m sorry. I really am. I’m so sorry for how everything went down between us back then, and I’m not even talking about how I didn’t defend you after that exposé came out.” He shakes his red head, tapping his fingers against the table. “I mean I’m sorry for being selfish and trying to keep you from going to New York just because I didn’t want to you to leave me. God, I was so stupid. And I never wanted to get in the way of your dreams, but that’s exactly what I did. Everything with your parents… you had enough going on and I made it harder for you and I’m sorry. You deserve to go anywhere you want with anyone you want. And after you left, I promised myself I was never going to fuck your life up again, or do anything to get in your way. And I thought that meant I was never going to see you again, but,” he shrugs, laughing just a tiny bit. “Here we are, I guess.”

 

Veronica blinks. She’s not sure what she was expecting, but it wasn’t… that. “Archie,” she says softly. “I… thank you for saying that.” It comes back to her all at once, the crushing feeling of wanting to stay with him forever and needing to run from everything else in that town, of her heart being ripped in two directions at once. The manic need for self preservation won out in the end, and she made her getaway like a bat out of hell; but she came back.

 

She came back.

 

“I didn’t want to lose you, either,” she admits now, her voice quiet. “Even if you hadn’t made it obvious you didn’t want me to go, it would have been just as hard for me. And you need to know that I didn’t leave because I stopped loving you.” She shakes her head like the very idea is insane. “I left because everything was falling apart around me and I was too scared to deal with the consequences.”

 

“You were being tortured,” Archie justifies for her. “What Ethel did--”

 

“I was a coward.”

 

“You were right to leave.”

 

She stares at him. “Do you really believe that?” she asks, steady.

 

Archie swallows a little. He looks genuinely conflicted. “It was right for you. You shouldn’t have had to stay and bear what was happening to you. I hated it when you left, Ronnie, I can’t lie about that part. God, I  _ hated _ it. I felt alone and I felt like I was never going to be okay again and even just thinking about you being happy in New York made me miserable.” He shakes his head like he’s coming back to himself. “But that’s because you broke my fucking heart. You know you did. And I know I broke yours too, in a million different ways.”

 

Veronica nods slowly, suddenly feeling very heavy. The first day she got to New York that summer, she cried. It was Wednesday and raining. For the rest of the week, she stayed in bed staring at the wobbly crack in the plaster of the ceiling and listening to the AC swish and mutter, asthmatic. 

 

“Enough, girlfriend,” her aunt had said by Friday, entering the room and flipping the switch, filling it with tepid yellow light. “You gotta get up.”

 

“I’m sleeping,” Veronica muttered into the pillow, even though she wasn’t. She’d spent the afternoon under the quilt and wide awake.

 

“It’s after five, sweetheart,” she replied. “I know you’re homesick, but we need to move things along.”

 

Homesick. That was the word that stuck with her for the rest of that summer. She wasn’t homesick for that town, or its diner, or the river, or for her parents.

 

She was homesick for him.

 

“There’s no limit to the ways we managed to fail each other,” she whispers now.

 

Archie stares at her for one long second. Then he reaches across the table and takes her hand in his.

 

…

 

Back in the limousine, the world feels far away and incapable of reaching them, the night outside still and quiet. By the time they’re ten minutes out from Riverdale, both of them are wondering where this night is going to end.

 

“We’re almost home,” Veronica observes, checking the time on the dashboard.  _ Home. _ She doesn’t really think about that word until it’s out of her mouth, but maybe that’s what Riverdale is to her, at the end of the day. Home.

 

“Yup,” Archie agrees. “What’s gonna happen when we get there?”

 

“Um,” she begins. The thrill of this night -- and it  _ is _ a thrill, the way her body is still humming even though they’ve been together for the last two hours, the ghost of his hand when he took hold of hers -- is almost encouraging enough for her to tell him to just keep driving so it never has to end. “Did you have something in mind?”

 

Archie shrugs. “Let me cook you dinner,” he says, his voice full of promises.

 

Oh, God. “What?”

 

“Dinner,” he repeats slowly, like the problem was with his enunciation. “Right now.”

 

“It’s eleven thirty.”

 

“It’s European.”

 

“At your  _ house?” _

 

“Well, that’s where my kitchen is,” he says logically.

 

There’s no way. “Didn’t we just eat?”

 

“Let’s eat again,” he suggests, undeterred. 

 

Veronica laughs a little. “I don’t think so.”

 

Archie is quiet for a minute like he’s regrouping, changing tactics. “How was the boat ride with Kevin?” is what he tries next.

 

Veronica looks at the silhouettes of maple trees passing by. They’re nearing the town line. Soon, they’ll be back in Riverdale. “It was fun,” she tells him.

 

“What did you guys talk about?”

 

Veronica sighs. “The wedding. The honeymoon.”

 

Archie nods, noncommittal. “Where are you going?”

 

“I don’t know,” Veronica laughs a little. “Nowhere, maybe. Or Sri Lanka.”

 

Archie actually scoffs. “You hate the beach,” he reminds her.

 

She digs around in her purse for a piece of gum, unwraps it and bites down hard. “Maybe I like it now.”

 

“Come over.”

 

“Archie,” she says softly. This is a bad idea, is what it is. This is a truly terrible idea. There’s no reason for her to want to say yes as much as she does. By this time they’re passing the welcome sign, The Town With Pep. “I can't.”

 

For a second Archie doesn’t answer. She’s expecting him to come back with some new and creative sales pitch, but in the end all he says is, “Okay.” He sighs a bit like she’s defeated him. “I’ll take you back to the Pembrooke.”

 

…

 

Back at the penthouse, Veronica wanders onto the balcony for a little while, restless. She drinks some water standing next to the sink. She goes to her bedroom and stares at Archie’s name in her contact list, then hedges and locks the screen, her whole life a series of tiny, enormous decisions. She paces.

 

Finally she goes downstairs.

 

Smithers is there, sitting at his desk reading a newspaper. She’d specifically requested he be the one overseeing the building while she was here this summer. “Can you do me a favor, Smithers?” she asks, hovering next to the elevator like a ghost.

 

He looks up expectantly. “What do you need, Miss Veronica?”

 

She shuts her eyes for a second. She shouldn’t do this. This is one item on an endless list of things she definitely should not do. When she opens her eyes, she says, “Can you drive me to Sweetwater Circle? I’ve got something I need to do.”

 

…

 

It’s after midnight by the time Smithers drops Veronica off in front of Archie’s door, his house towering above her like a castle. It rained a couple of hours ago, and the steps are slick under her feet as she climbs up to the porch. She rings twice and worries that he’ll already be asleep -- or worse, that there will be another girl here -- but when he finally opens the door, the house behind him is quiet save for the low hum of a piano somewhere. There are two guards just to his right, and they regard her casually, like it’s not uncommon for girls to show up here. A pair of dark rimmed glasses are perched on his nose.

 

“When did you go blind?” Veronica asks.

 

“Always have been,” Archie shrugs like he’s not even surprised to see her. “Couldn’t admit it.”

 

“Oh.” She nods once, curtly. “Do you still want to make me dinner?”

 

That makes him smile. “Yeah,” he says, and steps back to let her through. “Yeah, absolutely. Come in.”

 

She follows him through the enormous main room -- ballroom? -- and looks around. The ceiling seems to be hundreds of feet above their heads, the chandeliers glistening like so many stars above them. It’s strange to walk through this place now, after she attended one of the parties; the comparative silence is almost deafening, and it feels so much bigger than it did before. Her heels click like echoing gunshots.

 

The piano gets louder and Veronica looks around to figure out where it’s coming from; as if he can sense her thoughts, Archie points up. A few floors up behind a banister, a man sits, back hunched and his fingers flying over the black and white keys.

 

“Who is that?” Veronica asks.

 

“A member of the staff,” Archie tells her, pausing in the middle of the marble floor and tilting his head back to look up at the symphony. “He can play anything.”

 

Veronica stares too, and then, almost jokingly, “What about Clair de Lune?”

 

Before Archie has even finished turning his head to smile at her, the piano goes quiet, and then the first few notes of Clair de Lune begin to fill the air. Archie shrugs, all innocence, and Veronica's eyes widen before she laughs. “Wow.”

 

“Want to dance?” Archie smiles devilishly and holds one hand out to her, and she grins so hard it hurts, shaking her head in happy disbelief before lacing her fingers through his.

 

He pulls her forward and spins her around the room, her laughter echoing through the bright, cavernous space as the rest of the staff looks on with vaguely concealed smiles. She presses herself closer to him as they move in sync, and swears she can hear his heartbeat when he lifts her off of her feet and twirls her around. She tips her chin back as she grins and sees the crystal glass of the chandeliers winking and shimmering fifty feet above her, brighter than the stars outside. Brighter than all the lights in New York.

 

When Archie sets her down he keeps his hands on her waist, and when the song winds to a close, Veronica is breathing hard with her head against his chest, her own heart pounding. It's been a long time, she thinks, since she's danced. It's been a long time since she felt that much uninhibited joy at once.

 

“I think I'm sweaty,” she says, still laughing through her words as she steps back.

 

Archie looks at her with a gleam in his eye. “Swimming would probably fix that,” he says casually.

 

“What?” Veronica asks, and even though that suggestion is preposterous, her smile grows wider. There's no way he's serious.

 

Her gives the slightest shrug of his shoulders. “The pool is heated,” he tells her.

 

She closes her eyes and shakes her head, delighted and trying not to let it show. “What am I supposed to wear?”

 

Archie tilts his head for a moment like he's thinking about it. Then: “Come with me,” he says.

 

She follows him across the room to the winding white staircase with its gold banister, grabbing ahold of it as they practically run up the steps, taking two turns before they step out into a hallway on the third floor.

 

Archie leads her through rooms filled with instruments in glass cases, past indoor fountains and spa style bathrooms and windows adorned with sheer vivid curtains, the aroma of fresh flowers everywhere. He watches her the whole time, gauging her every reaction. Finally he opens a door and says, “This is my room.”

 

Veronica steps inside and looks around; it's simpler than the rest of the house, and reminds her, actually, of his old bedroom at his dad's house. She doesn't have long to take it in, though, because then Archie starts laughing, covering his eyes with one hand.

 

“What?” Veronica asks, confused.

 

“It's--” he pauses, opening his eyes. “I don't know. It's just so weird to see you standing in my room. Like, it's not something I ever imagined actually happening.”

 

She rolls her eyes a little and smiles before sitting on the bed. “What did you bring me up here to show me?”

 

Archie recovers from his own amusement and walks over to an enormous armour, pulling the doors open and revealing crisply folded stacks of clothes, countless pressed suits hung up in rows, shining shoes lined up neatly. “I think we can find something for you to wear in here for swimming,” he says, and leans forward to look through the shirts. “There's this one,” he says thoughtfully, tossing a silken button down onto the bed beside her. “Or this one,” he continues, throwing her a shirt of striped cotton. “Or this one.” He grins back at her and starts tossing her every shirt in the cabinet, the fabric fluttering down, over and around her.

 

“Stop!” she exclaims, swatting at the falling clothes, but he just keeps tossing more and more onto the bed until both of them can hardly breathe from how hard they're laughing, Veronica falling back on the sheets and smiling as she sighs, running her fingers over the fabric of Archie's clothes around her. “They're all beautiful shirts,” she says quietly. “Any one will work.”

 

…

 

Veronica has always loved swimming; she remembers her parents putting her in classes when she was a toddler, how she would paddle determinedly across the expanse of any number of pools. She even went swimming with Archie a lot when they were together in high school. She goes swimming with Reggie a lot now.

 

Still, she’s never been in a pool in the dark before, and walking out onto Archie’s deck and staring at the dark water is strange and a little disconcerting, like being at school on a weekend or the only people eating in a restaurant. The surface of the pool is placid and still.

 

She peers over at Archie. “Don’t you think this is kind of creepy?” she asks.

 

He mock gasps. “Hot shot lawyer!” he says playfully, taking off his shirt. “What are you, scared?”

 

“Uh oh,” Veronica rolls her eyes good naturedly. “Gauntlet throwing.” She pulls down the hem of the shirt she’s wearing -- Archie’s shirt. It falls to her mid thighs, and she can feel goosebumps rising on her legs in the cool night air.

 

“It is creepy, you’re one hundred percent right,” he tells her. “Which is why I’m going to turn the lights on.” He walks across the marble to a power switch and flicks it, and instantly, the place comes to life. The water illuminates in an electric blue; strings of lights dangle up above, strung over the deck, and the lamps affixed to the walls of the estate glow with ambition. Then, Archie flings himself into the water, diving into the deep end, graceful as a dolphin. Rather than wait for him to resurface and taunt her to jump, she immediately cannonballs in after him, emerging from under the heated water a few moments later to see his grinning face.

 

“You feeling better?” he asks her, treading the water to stay in place.

 

She pushes her wet hair out of her face. “What, better than how I felt at River Bend?” she replies, and then adds an unceremonious, “Yes. Definitely.”

 

Archie nods, breathing hard. “You’ll figure things out,” he tells her.

 

“Yeah,” Veronica says. “I guess.”

 

“Hey,” Archie says, swimming closer to her. “I mean it. This stuff with Reggie? You will.”

 

Veronica smiles at that. “It doesn’t always feel that way, Archiekins, I will tell you that much.”

 

“Yeah,” Archie says softly. “I hear that.” The two of them stay right there for a minute, quiet. “You know that you can always count on me for stuff, right?” he asks suddenly. “I mean, even if we’re married to other people or living on opposite sides of the world or we don’t speak for four years again for some reason. Like, no matter what. I’m here.” Then he shakes his head and laughs a little. “I know that’s corny, you don’t have to say it,” he adds.

 

But Veronica shakes her head, gripping onto the edge of the pool to steady herself. “That’s not what I was going to say at all, actually,” she tells him. “Actually, I was going to say that I’m here for you, too.”

 

...

 

Fred used to always say how proud he was of Archie, for his spirit of humbleness and generosity, how he didn’t mind if things were simple or if they couldn’t afford to throw him a big birthday party that year. Now, after he tells her he’s still intending to make her dinner, Archie is leading her into his kitchen where the handles on the cupboards are plated in gold that she almost finds herself praying is fake. She suspects, in fact, that everything on this estate is very much real.

 

“You like risotto?” Archie asks.

 

“Um.” That is... not what she was expecting when he said  _ dinner. _ She blinks. “Sure.”

 

Archie flicks on the rest of the lights in the kitchen and it goes clinically bright, stainless steel appliances and quadruple pizza ovens stacked together, a big island with bar stools and a fireplace against the far wall. “So,” he says, lifting a pot off the hanging rack above the island while she slides onto a stool. “Are you regretting leaving Reggie back at River Bend yet?”

 

She snorts a little. “Can you stop saying his name like that?”

 

“How am I saying it?”

 

“I don’t know,” she starts to laugh. “However you’re saying it.”

 

“I’m not saying it any way,” Archie shrugs. “ _ Reginald _ was the name of saints.”

 

“ _ Reginald _ is going into politics back in New York.”

 

Archie nods slowly, like he’s filing that information into the back of his brain along with all the other shit he’s frankly not crazy about but suspects he has to deal with for the time being. “Is he gonna be president?”

 

“Can we please not talk about Reggie?”

 

Archie grins like,  _ as you wish. _ “What do you want to talk about?”

 

“I don’t know,” she says. “Whatever normal people talk about. Baseball.”

 

Archie wrinkles his nose. “You want to talk about baseball?”

 

“No.” Veronica raises her hands and then drops them again, useless. “I actually don’t know anything about baseball.”

 

“I’ll teach you,” he says, cutting up an onion, quick and expert. “Is this weird?” he asks once it’s in the pot, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. “You have this look on your face like you think this is really weird.”

 

“Well,” she says, shrugging, examining her painted nails. “It is a little weird.”

 

“Yeah,” Archie echoes.

 

After a beat, Veronica says: “She kept everything the same. Like, my bedroom and stuff.”

 

“Who?” he asks. “Your mother?”

 

In truth she’s not really listening, instead watching him toast the rice on the stove, pour in a ladleful of stock. Clearly he’s comfortable doing it -- clearly he’s done it before -- but it still feels somehow unnatural. “Uh huh.”

 

“What?” he asks when he catches her staring. “This is how you make risotto.”

 

“I know how to make risotto,” she tells him, her legs kicking softly at the island. “I’m just surprised you do.”

 

He looks over at her and says, “I know how to do a lot of things I didn’t used to know how to do,” and they are definitely not talking about dinner anymore, the air crackling between them.

 

“Anyway,” she says too loudly, getting up and moving to sit on the counter, further back. She clears her throat. “My mom. My bedroom. I guess she just… I don’t know. I guess she knew I’d be back.”

 

“She missed you.”

 

“Did she?” Veronica asks.

 

Archie gives the rice one more stir before he abandons the stove, and oh God. He stops when he’s right between her knees. “Yeah,” he says slowly, glancing down. His hands have landed on her thighs. “I think she kind of did.”

 

“Yeah,” Veronica echoes breathlessly. When she looks up at him they’re face to face like commuters on a packed train at rush hour, and she really needs half a second to… “Just…” she whispers.

 

“Ronnie--” he begins, but she cuts him off.

 

“Stop,” she shakes her head. “I want to-- I just--” and she’s going to say,  _ we shouldn’t do this, _ just like the very first time they ever kissed in Cheryl Blossom’s closet, but just like then there is the sudden press of lips and it feels like a carnival ride where the floor drops out and sheer force is the only thing keeping her from falling. Archie’s hands are everywhere at once and she winds her arms around his neck to keep steady, heart slamming with a shocking violence against her ribcage. She could act surprised, but this is why she came here, isn’t it? This is what she’s wanted since the first night she came back. She gets her fingers into his hair, hard and clutching. After a moment, she hears him say her name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there it is ladies! have a great week. xo


	12. Chapter 12

Veronica bites at Archie’s lower lip in his kitchen; she runs her hands up over his hair. “Ronnie,” he says after a minute, two hands on either side of her face like he wants to make sure she’s not planning to go anywhere. He’s smiling hard and bright against her mouth.

 

“Hi,” she says. Kissing him feels familiar but also new, a song they haven’t played on the radio in a really long time. “Risotto needs a stir.”

 

“Who cares?” He sets his teeth at the dip where her neck meets her shoulder and is lifting her up off the counter the tiniest bit. “God, Ronnie,” he murmurs, his lips wandering up close to her ear. “I missed you so much.”

 

“Shh,” she orders, concentrating. He tastes like salt and summer, the same. “No you didn’t.”

 

Right away Archie gets that look on his face like she’s slapped him, and he sets her down on the counter with a thud that sings up through her spine.

 

“Ow! What the hell, Archie?” she reaches behind her to rub her tailbone. “That hurt.”

 

“Sorry.” His face softens for a moment. “But I don’t know how much I appreciate you constantly acting like you don’t believe a single word that comes out of my mouth.”

 

Veronica barks out a brittle little laugh, incredulous. “I _don’t_ believe a single word that comes out of your mouth.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Why?” she repeats. “Because -- I mean, because look where we are right now.” She throws her hands up to gesture to his mansion. “Am I supposed to just understand all of this? Because I don’t.”

 

“Then why are you here?” he explodes.

 

She glares at him, embarrassed. This was a mistake. She knew this was a mistake coming in, and she did it anyway. _Stupid girl,_ she thinks bitterly, angry at herself and Archie with equal intensity. _Slow learner._

 

“Look, Ronnie,” Archie says quietly. He gets a little closer again, careful, warm breath at the spot behind her ear. “Sooner or later, I think we’re going to do this.”

 

She jerks away like he’s radioactive. “The hell we are.”

 

“Sure we are,” he shrugs like it’s that simple. Veronica wants to hop off the counter, but he’s in her way. “And don’t pretend you don’t want to, because if you didn’t you wouldn’t have asked me to drive you back to Riverdale and you wouldn’t be showing up to my house at midnight so I can make you a second dinner you don’t even want to eat.” He looks so sure of himself, Veronica could kill him.

 

“How scientific,” she says, narrowing her eyes. On the stove the rice is boiling over, an angry hiss. “Maybe you’re right, maybe I do regret leaving Reggie at River Bend now.” She’s striking out in every direction, indiscriminate. She wants to cut deep, and do it quickly. “And I bet you regret not finding some other girl to give you what you want.”

 

Archie’s face goes dark, and she can tell that blow landed, but it doesn’t feel anything close to satisfying. “You had a rough night,” he tells her, “so I’m going to let that one slide.”

 

“Oh,” she says sarcastically, “that’s so sweet of you.”

 

Archie shrugs. “If I just wanted sex, I could get sex. Trust me, I’ve done it. But I want you.”

 

She seriously almost screams. “Are you kidding me?”

 

He shakes his head. “You don’t have to be jealous, Ronnie.”

 

Veronica almost decks him. “I don’t have to be _what?_ ” The nerve he has, seriously, to invite her over to his house after all this time and then--

 

“Stop,” he says, holding his palms out. “Whatever offensive thing you think I’m saying, that’s not what I’m saying. But if you think I’m just here so you can use me for my body this whole summer and then pretend I don’t exist come September, let me know right now.” He has a gleam in his eye like he thinks he’s a comedian.

 

“God,” she says, “You are such a dick.”

 

He grins. “It’s a sickness.”

 

“I’m not kidding,” she says, pushing him away from her. “This whole thing is disgusting. I’m cheating on my fiance.” She presses the heels of her palms into her eyes. “I’m disgusting.”

 

Archie rolls his eyes a little. “That’s very flattering,” he says pointedly.

 

“Shut _up,_ you narcissist,” she snaps. “It’s not about whether or not I want to be with you, it’s about the fact that I’m sitting here throwing away all my morals and doing the exact same thing I’m pretty sure Reggie is doing--”

 

“Wait, _what?_ ” Archie asks, eyes widening. “Reggie is _cheating_ on you?”

 

“No!” Veronica exclaims. “I don’t know. I’m going back to River Bend.”

 

“What?” he says again. “No you’re not.”

 

“Yes, I am,” she spits.

 

“It’s one in the goddamn morning, Veronica--”

 

“So what? I’ll take a bus.”

 

Archie actually laughs at that. “No the hell you won’t.”

 

Now she’s even more pissed. “Watch me,” she fires back. This time she does hop off the tile, shoving him roughly out of her way. She could probably get Smithers to drive her back up to River Bend, but instead she decides she’s got a point to prove. She grabs her bag off the table, brushing past him and calling a cab. The smell of burning rice sticks to her shirt clear across town.

 

…

 

The Riverdale bus station is a little like what Veronica imagines the seventh circle of hell would be like, if the seventh circle of hell had hard plastic chairs. She leans against a greasy metal pillar and waits for the line to go down, and when it does, she goes up to the Greyhound window and talks to the bored looking clerk sitting behind it. She wonders what kind of bad decisions you have to make in your life to wind up manning a bus station window in Riverdale on a Saturday night in June. She wonders what kind of bad decisions she herself has made to wind up here.

 

“Thanks,” she mumbles when the man hands her a paper ticket. She knows she’s being childish and stupid, riding a bus back to River Bend in the middle of the night, but it’s like some switch just flipped inside her the moment she left Archie’s house, some idiotic desire to follow through on this now that she told him she would.

 

She feels ridiculous, and also like the worst kind of turncoat. Because what happened with Archie just now -- one time thing or not -- is bigger than just betraying Reggie. It’s a hundred times more complicated than that: she doesn’t know anything about what Archie has been doing over the last four years. She’s a hypocrite for wanting Reggie to be faithful after what just happened in the kitchen. She’s been lying to everyone and making the same mistakes like it’s high school all over again. She hates it. She’s not doing it. No way.

 

She finds a place to sit on a wooden bench in the waiting room, between an old lady knitting a hat on skinny circular needles and a sleepy looking homeless man with a cart piled high full of grocery bags. She crosses her arms and stares at the dirty tile floor until it’s time to board, and then she finds a seat near the back of the bus, sliding into the window seat and shoving her bag between her knees. She can hear music coming from someone’s earphones; a few rows ahead of her, someone is eating something that smells strongly of garlic.

 

She’s just ruling out the idea of taking a very long nap on the off chance she might miss her stop when Archie comes walking down the aisle of the bus and sliding into the seat next to her.

 

...

 

She looks at him in disbelief and then sets her lips in a hard line and shakes her head at him.

 

“Come on, Ronnie,” he says quietly. “You don’t have to do this.” He watches as the driver shuts the doors and starts the bus, the rumble of the engine and the squeak of the tires as they pull out of the station.

 

“I already am,” she says curtly.

 

He roll his eyes in the dark. “We can get off at the next stop. I’ll call my driver and have him meet us there.”

 

“No thank you. I’m riding this bus back to River Bend just like I told you.”

 

It’s Archie’s turn to shake his head like she’s being ridiculous, leaning his head back against the seat. “Fine,” he says. “Have it your way.”

 

“What does that mean?”

 

“It means I guess we’re riding this bus back to River Bend together.”

 

She scoffs. “Why? You can have your driver take you at the next stop,” she imitates his tone.

 

“Watch it,” he replies, but there’s no real heat behind it. Mostly he just sounds resigned.

 

Neither one of them says a word as they roll out of the South Side and past the town line. Eventually the rundown landscape gives way to industrial buildings, then the blurry outlines of heavy summer trees. The bus is dark except for the glow of the occasional street lamp outside and somebody’s reading light a few rows ahead of them; Archie thinks she probably fell asleep when suddenly Veronica speaks.

 

“I’m going to ask you this one time, and then I’m never going to ask you again,” she says quietly, staring straight ahead at the back of the seat in front of her. “Did you ever kill anybody?”

 

 _“What?”_ Archie blinks at that, kind of surprised and absurdly offended. Sure, the work he does is shady, but he’s not some kind of horror movie assassin. “Of course not.”

 

“Did anybody ever try to kill you?”

 

 _“No,_ Ronnie,” he says, and then adds, “Jesus.”

 

“Okay,” Veronica exhales, leaning her head back against the seat.

 

“Look, I’m sorry, I know you don’t want to be a cheater,” Archie starts. Clearly, this night was a wash; he wants to smooth it over as quickly as possible, wants to get back to how it felt in his pool, in his ballroom, in his kitchen with his lips on hers. “I’m stupid, I--”

 

“Nope,” Veronica cuts him off evenly, turning to face him for the first time and holding a hand up to stop him. “What I felt back in your kitchen is not your fault. I can’t let myself betray Reggie’s trust like that as long as we’re engaged, but it’s not your fault.”

 

Archie shrugs. Intellectually, he knows she’s right; she doesn’t want to cheat, and hell, _Archie_ doesn’t want her to cheat, either. He wants her to break off the engagement altogether, actually, but that doesn’t mean he wants to talk about it on this bus ride into the mountains. “Okay.”

 

Veronica doesn’t bite. “No,” she says. “Archie. Look at me.”

 

Reluctantly, Archie does. She looks tired, makeup creeping below her lash line. She also looks like she could fight a bear, should the need and opportunity arise. “Yeah.”

 

“I love Reggie.”

 

Oh, please. Archie snorts, not entirely in amusement. “Okay…?”

 

“I mean it,” Veronica says, her posture straightening out a bit. “Sometimes everything that comes out of his mouth makes me want to scream at him, but if nothing else, he’s been my best friend for four years and I love him. Even if-- even if I’m not sure that I can marry him.”

 

Archie’s back prickles at that; he feels his face go hot. “Your best friend sneaks around with other girls behind your back?”

 

God, that was the wrong thing to say. He can see her face change in the dark, and he _wishes_ her immediate reaction was anger. It’s not.

 

She looks _hurt._

 

He continues. “Because I won’t lie to you, saying all you feel when you’re around him is loneliness sounds pretty bad to me.”

 

“I was drunk when I said that,” she says tightly. “I didn’t mean it, it’s not a big deal.”

 

“Really?” he asks, frowning. “Does that mean you usually feel _worse_ than lonely?”

 

“It means I need to talk to him.”

 

Archie rolls his eyes. His annoyance is like a rope wrapped around him: something with physical density, like he might be able to reach out and grab a fistful of it. Like it’s so thick and suffocating he can barely breathe. “So you can figure out some way to excuse the way he makes you feel?” he asks petulantly. “In case you haven’t noticed, you can’t marry him to keep up an image and then ask me to distract you when he makes you feel like shit.”

 

Veronica looks stung by that. Good, he thinks. Let her sting. “Don’t tell me what I’ve noticed,” she says coldly, drawing herself up to her full height.

 

“Somebody needs to,” Archie says. “Do you know how fucking spoiled you sound? I know you grew up in this perfect world where you got everything you wanted, but not all of us did, and--”

 

“You are not oppressed!” Veronica explodes. “Oh my god, you’re a hugely popular white boy millionaire living in a mansion on Sweetwater, Archie. I’m not going to stand here and listen to you talk about how hard your life is. It’s insulting.”

 

Archie feels his face get hot, shame and anger. “That’s not--”

 

“No,” Veronica interrupts, “it is. And I’m not going to pretend like some of what you’re saying isn’t true, but you’re acting like a child because you hate the fact that over the last four years I had time to fall in love with someone else. And I’m sorry that’s so startling to you and that you haven’t gone back to being the unequivocal love of my life and that you think you lost your seat at the table. But life didn’t just _pause_ between the day we broke up and now. There are things I _can’t_ throw away. Stop throwing a tantrum just because I said I need to talk to Reggie.”

 

Archie frowns deeply, hates that she’s right. “You’re going to talk and then go ride off into the sunset to be a politician-lawyer power couple, no doubt.”

 

“Wait, what?” she asks, eyes narrowing. “What does this have to do with me being a lawyer?”

 

“It’s not _about_ you being a lawyer,” he huffs out, annoyed; he can hear his voice getting sharper, but it’s not like he can do anything to stop it. He doesn’t have a bad temper with Veronica, ever, but enough is enough. “It’s about you not knowing what you’re talking about.”

 

“Let’s talk about what you do for work,” Veronica says, eyes flashing. “Because you may be distracting everyone else in the state with your lavish parties, but I know damn well you’re not spending your life in investment banking. So what’s your real job?”

 

Archie narrows his eyes. “It _is_ investment banking,” he tells her, hostile.

 

“I’m telling you that I know that’s not true.”

 

“And I’m telling _you_ that you don’t know me well enough to be prying into my life like this!”

 

Veronica looks at him like he punched her. “I _don’t?_ ” she asks, and her voice is so quiet.

 

That’s when the bus starts to smoke.

 

…

 

Veronica stands miserably on the side of the dark road twenty minutes later, stamping her feet against the cold and listening to the irritated murmur of the displaced crowd all around her. There’s another bus coming to rescue them, allegedly, since theirs is still emitting great, billowing clouds of stinky black smoke from underneath its massive hood. The bus driver had assured them it wasn’t going to explode, but he’d also quickly ushered them all about a hundred yards down the road, so Veronica isn’t entirely impressed with his confidence. She has no idea how long they’ve been waiting. Her phone is officially dead.

 

She crosses her arms inside her coat, trying not to shiver as the frigid wind blows. She hates buses. She hates River Bend. She hates risotto. And she hates Archie most of all.

 

God, she’s so _humiliated_. He was right: she’d completely misjudged their relationship, just like she completely misjudged her relationship with Reggie. She’d made the mistake of thinking that just because her interactions with Archie were important to her -- were the most important, even -- they were important to him, too. And she was wrong.

 

It should come as a relief, Veronica thinks, shoving her icy hands into the pockets of her coat. After all, she spent the last few weeks wishing she could stop unintentionally wishing to be near him -- for this whole thing to come crashing down -- and now she has the perfect reason to want to be as far away as possible. But instead she can feel her own weird heartbreak creeping in all around like a pack of wild animals creeping out of the woods that run along the side of the road. She grits her teeth hard and tries to push it back. She’ll be home soon, she assures herself. She’ll be fine.

 

“Come here,” Archie says suddenly. It’s the first thing either one of them had said since they got off the bus; he’s been keeping his distance, staring out at the cars whizzing by, but when Veronica glances over in his direction she finds his dark gaze is fixed on hers.

 

She glares back. “Why?” she demands.

 

“Because you’re freezing.”

 

“I am not.”

 

Archie rolls his eyes, shrugging out of his own expensive looking coat and holding it out to her. “Here,” he says. “Take this.”

 

“I don’t know you well enough for that,” she snaps, scowling.

 

Archie sighs noisily, coming closer. “I’m sorry,” he says, draping the jacket over a guardrail and reaching for her arm. “Come on, you know I didn’t mean that.”

 

Veronica jerks her elbow away. “Didn’t you?”

 

“No!” he says, eyes widening like he’s honestly horrified. “Of course not. You probably know me better than anyone ever will.”

 

“Clearly not.” Veronica doesn’t want to be having this conversation. She wants to go home and get in bed and never see him again in her life. “Look,” she says, voice shrill and brittle. “Obviously whatever we’ve had going on since the summer started, this _‘friendship,’_ was a sideshow to begin with. It was weird while it lasted, and now it can be over and we can all go back to our regularly scheduled programming. Sound good? Here, we can start right now, even.”

 

She’s about to stalk away, but Archie’s eyes narrow. “What do you mean it’s a sideshow?” he asks.

 

Veronica scoffs. “Oh, come on. Look at us, Archie.” She gestures widely. She feels raw and bruised and suddenly exhausted, like she needs to decompress in a dark, quiet room somewhere. “Do we honestly strike you as people who are capable of being friends with each other?”

 

“I don’t get it,” Archie says, sounding somehow wounded. “Why? Because you think I’m such an idiot?”

 

“Because I --” Is he serious? _“No,”_ she says, annoyed and embarrassed that she has to explain it. She opens her mouth and closes it again. She hugs herself and stares out at the highway. She can’t say it’s because it’s impossible for her to be friends with him. She can’t tell him they can only be one of two things: hopelessly in love or complete and total strangers. That she won’t -- she _can’t_ \-- have him any other way. “Because we have all these years of history and because you’re the one surrounded by friends and people who love you every second and literally no one in that town would mind if I fell off the face of the earth.”

 

“I’d care,” Archie says immediately. “Come on.” He looks at her for a second. “Do you honestly think I just can’t get enough of the lobby of the Inn? Do you think that’s why I keep showing up there every night instead of just waiting for my friends in the car outside?”

 

Veronica hasn’t thought about it, really. She hasn’t wanted to let herself. Even after all these weeks there was a part of her that felt like if she ever looked too hard at the things Archie did, he would turn out to be a hologram, something she’d made up to distract herself from her own loneliness and fear. “I don’t know,” she finally says.

 

Archie laughs at that. “The Inn is boring as all hell, Ronnie. I keep coming in because I want to be near you. And I think you keep reshuffling your papers and drinking your coffee at the desk because you like being near me, too.” He shrugs. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t actually spend a lot of time thinking if it makes sense for me to logically want to be around someone. I usually just think about if I like them.”

 

Oh, for God’s sake. “You realize that not thinking about popularity is a luxury you only get if you’re already popular,” Veronica mutters, speaking from experience. Still, she feels about two inches tall. She wishes she could still look at the world the way Archie looks at it.

 

“I got defensive, is all,” he says now, sitting down on the guardrail and stretching his long legs out in front of him. “That’s why I said it. It’s complicated with my work, okay? I mean, clearly it’s complicated with my work. It’s just not something I like talking about.”

 

“I can tell,” Veronica says quietly. After a moment she perches on the guardrail beside him, the chill from the metal bleeding right through her jeans. “I’m sorry. I should have minded my own business.”

 

“No,” Archie says. “That’s the point. I don’t want you to mind your own business.”

 

Veronica looks over at his profile in the darkness, surprised. “You don’t?”

 

 _“No,”_ he says. “Look, I don’t always understand why I still want to be around you after everything that happened between us, either. I know you think I’m an asshole, which I am. But I don’t want to go back to our regular programs, or whatever you called it. I don’t want to start avoiding each other just because you don’t want to cheat on Reggie or because we had two fights in one night,” he laughs a little.

 

Veronica thinks about that for a second. “I don’t think you’re an asshole,” she says finally, staring out at the highway.

 

“Sure you do,” he says. “It’s fine.”

 

“I don’t, actually,” she tells him. She thinks again of the word homesick, and her heart does something strange and complicated inside her chest then, a feeling like both swelling up and falling apart at once. She feels nervous, like she finally taught herself how to stop missing him, and this night is undoing all of her work. She wants to stay with him, she realizes. She wants it like all hell, and the wanting is so fierce and sudden that it knocks her back a little. She’s homesick. She’s homesick for _him._ She makes herself wait a beat before she continues. “I think you probably know me better than anyone else, too, and I think I care about you so much that it scares me, and that’s why I don’t want to put you through the same pain I did four years ago.”

 

Archie huffs out a breath, looks down at his knuckles, biting red from the cold. “Okay,” he says. “Thank you.”

 

“Don’t thank me,” Veronica orders softly.

 

A car rumbles up not long after that, headlights shining like beacons in the dark, and Veronica squints at it.

 

Archie looks over at her. “I called my driver,” he admits. “And you don’t have to get in the car if you don’t want to, but--”

 

“No,” she says, and smiles at him a little. “I don’t actually want to go back to River Bend.” The car coasts to a stop in front of them. Looking at it, Veronica thinks she might cry from relief.

 

Instead she and Archie slide into the back seat together, the two of them brushing arms as they sit beside each other. Veronica smiles to herself; she can’t help it. She has this overwhelming breathless feeling now, to finally have him back. This time when he offers her his coat she takes it, draping it over herself like a blanket and curling up into a ball underneath.

 

“Wake me up when we get home,” she says, and Archie nods. The sound of his steady breathing is the last thing Veronica hears before she falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed!! xo


	13. Chapter 13

The second Veronica opens her eyes the next morning, her stomach is already in knots, anxiety weighing on her like a brick, like trying to breathe normally while being smothered with a pillow.

 

Reggie is coming home today.

 

She tries to tell herself the scoreboard is even -- he sneaks around with Josie behind her back constantly, shouldn’t she be allowed to slide for kissing Archie one time? But the larger side of her brain wins, and so does her conscious, the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach and the knowing that she’s crossed a line she can never come back from. She ran out on River Bend without saying a word to him, and then she kissed Archie. She clenches her fist and and feels the cool metal of her engagement ring digging into her knuckle as she sits up in bed.

 

The first thing she does is try to go about her day normally, getting breakfast in the kitchen and checking her phone. There’s one text from Archie -- they’d finally exchanged numbers last night -- telling her he’s throwing another astronomical party tonight and that she should come. She pushes that proposition out of her mind and checks for other new messages. There’s nothing from Reggie, and Veronica’s stomach flips unpleasantly, but Betty said,  _ saw your note, hope everything is okay. was reggie being stupid? _

 

It’s an innocent and honestly appropriate question. Reggie was definitely being stupid, but the suggestion makes her whole body jump start; she thinks of the weather app he checks on his phone every single morning. She thinks of the way he kisses her at night and wraps his arms around her under the covers, steady and warm. She thinks of how calmly he talked her down when she panicked at the idea of coming back here, back to Riverdale, and suddenly she’s not at all certain she’s not about to burst into tears. She feels fiercely defensive of him, even though last night she would have said the same thing Betty said to anyone who would listen. Worse, probably.

 

She pushes her bowl of cereal aside roughly and clicks back to her messages with Reggie.  _ Hey, _ she keys in, then swallows her pride like a mouthful of cough syrup and hits send.

 

Reggie doesn’t text back.

 

…

 

When Reggie and Veronica do finally see each other that day, it’s not until late in the evening. It’s not until after Veronica gets home from work at the Inn after actively avoiding Josie all day and trying to hide from everyone else’s inquisitive looks; by now, it’s not a secret among Archie’s friend group that he left with Veronica an entire day early, and because essentially all of her co-workers are members of his friend group, it did not make for a particularly carefree day on the job.

 

She’s not even really expecting Reggie to be home when she walks through the front door of the penthouse -- after her text went unanswered all day she assumed he was pissed and wanted space and to be left alone. Which is why she’s so wholly surprised when she sets her purse down on an end table and finds Reggie sitting sentry on the couch, waiting.

 

“Um,” she says, her heart jumping. The sight of him feels like a pleasant surprise and like a homecoming, but also sort of fundamentally incorrect, and she remembers him laughing as he climbed into Josie’s tent with her. She wonders, not for the first time, what they did in that tent, and feels the bile rise up in her throat. “Hi.”

 

Reggie frowns a little. He pushes one hand through his black hair nervously, and Veronica realizes they’re both ashamed, standing here looking at each other feeling equal parts angry and guilty. Still: “What happened last night?” he asks, a hard look in his eye.

 

Veronica immediately interprets that as ‘ _ Did you cheat on me with Archie?’ _ and her face goes hot. She plants her feet and says, “You tell me,” knowing he’ll read it as ‘ _ Did you cheat on me with Josie?’ _

 

She’s expecting an  _ I asked you first, _ the kind of  _ guess what I’m hiding _ that she’s used to when it comes to the men in her life, but instead he huffs out a breath and leans back against the cushions and says, “God, Veronica.” He rolls his eyes. “You’re already trying to start a fight.”

 

Is he serious? “Don’t you think a fight is kind of appropriate?” she demands. “Considering you--”

 

He raises his eyebrows. “Considering I  _ what, _ Veronica?”

 

She crosses her arms over her chest defensively. “I saw you get in Josie’s tent last night,” she says, expecting him to look shocked or caught or alarmed.

 

Instead he just looks at her like she’s insane. “And what, you think I was in there cheating on you? We went in there to talk because it was fucking freezing outside.  _ Kevin _ was in the tent with us.”

 

Wait, what? Veronica actually takes a step back. “I’m sorry,” she says, a pounding in her throat. There’s no way. “What did you say?”

 

“You really think that low of me,” Reggie scoffs. “As if I would fuck Josie ten feet away from where you sleep when I literally  _ just _ told you I was getting my shit together and wanted to fix things between us. Instead, you--” he scrubs a hand through his hair again. “You left with Archie.”

 

Oh, God. “Stop,” Veronica says, suddenly terrified. “Shut up for a second.” She just went from zero to the damn near verge of screaming in two point five seconds. The room suddenly feels way too hot. Reggie didn’t cheat on her last night? Kevin was in the tent too? She feels a minimum of six different emotions play out inside her, anger at herself and this intense indignation. Most of all she’s scared she just blew her life to pieces all on her own. Reggie is staring at her like she’s officially lost it.

 

“That’s how it looked to me,” she says, staring at the hardwood. Veronica rubs at the base of her work ponytail for a second, trying to figure out how to play this. She knows she can be secretive. It’s not a quality she particularly likes in herself, but there’s no way she can tell Reggie the whole truth. What happened with Archie was a stupid mistake, some bizarre one time muscle memory thing. It has to be. “So, yes, I left with Archie.”

 

“You did?” Reggie says, even though he clearly already knew this -- and God, his  _ face, _ Veronica feels terrible, she feels like the worst person in the world. He looks pissed, sure, but more than that he looks  _ hurt. _ “Seriously?”

 

“You’ve given me a million reasons to think you’re cheating on me the last few weeks, Reggie,” she says, being deliberately defensive. “And honestly, I don’t know if you can truthfully tell me that absolutely nothing has happened between you and Josie, or that you haven’t at least wanted something to happen between you two.”

 

“Oh, please,” Reggie scoffs. “Stop projecting, Veronica.”

 

Veronica swerves right away from that particular point. It feels like much too dangerous ground right now. “And then we got into an argument in our tent and two seconds later I saw you climbing into Josie’s, so yes, the obvious conclusion was that I had to get the hell out of that stupid campsite and come home, and Archie was the only one who could take me.” She says it as if that’s all that Archie is, someone she knew a long time ago who just so happened to be willing to give her a ride, a footnote in her life as it stands. She knows it’s untrue and unfair, and she swallows down her guilt and uncertainty. She’s trying to think of the best way to backpedal and hide what happened at Archie’s house, when suddenly, almost without thinking about it, she just sort of charges ahead. “But I think--” she blurts out, “I think I fucked up.”

 

Reggie laughs at that, disbelieving, like this is funny. “Why, what’d you do?” he asks. Then, looking at her more closely, like he’s somehow realizing that she’s not fucking around: “Seriously, what’d you do?”

 

Veronica takes a deep breath. Then she tells him.

 

_ “What?” _ Reggie asks twice in a row, staring at her in the warm light from the lamps dotting the room. “Really, I just -- you did what?”

 

“I’m sorry,” Veronica says again. “It’s not like I went with him specifically to kiss him, but after everything that happened all weekend, and in the heat of the moment--”

 

“Stop,” Reggie cuts her off. “I’m trying not to lose my shit right now, V.” He’s still staring at her like he’s been blindsided, but there’s something else starting to creep in, some look of repentance. “I know I shouldn’t.”

 

Veronica straightens up. “Why not?” she asks. “You just found out I cheated on you. You’re allowed to scream at me.” She wishes he would. She wishes he would stop using this controlled tone.

 

“I  _ know,” _ he huffs out, annoyed. “But I--  _ fuck,” _ he says, and Veronica squints at him. “I… I kissed Josie,” he spits out.

 

_ “What?” _ It’s Veronica’s turn to freak out. “You literally just told me nothing happened between you two!” Her voice sounds shrill even to her own ears, but she’s nowhere near capable of toning it down.

 

“Nothing happened between us this weekend,” he says seriously, fisting his hands into the fabric of the couch. “Nothing has happened between us at all, actually, except for the first morning we got back to Riverdale.”

 

Veronica has a sharp memory just then, of Jughead standing in front of her at the gas station, telling her he saw Reggie over by Josie’s house.

 

“I went to her house to apologize to her for everything that happened between us in high school, which is stupid, I know, you don’t have to tell me. But as soon as I saw her it was like old feelings just came straight back to the surface and we saw each other and I kissed her before either of us even said a word. I wasn’t thinking, and she had no idea that you and I were together.”

 

“And you’re just telling me this  _ now?”  _ she barks. “I kissed Archie less than eighteen hours ago and I already admitted it to you!”

 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “There’s literally no excuse I can give you except that I didn’t want to lose you, and even that’s just lame and fucked up and I hate myself for it.”

 

“Good,” she snaps, and then suddenly feels so drained and exhausted, pressing her palms into her eyes and collapsing on the opposite side of the couch from him. He’s a disaster. She’s a disaster. And the two of them together is a disaster. “Do you love her?” she asks quietly. She thinks about her relationship with him, and how they were friends before they were lovers, whispering to each other over library books at NYU. She thinks about the carnage and destruction around them, and about how they can never, ever come back from this.

 

Reggie’s eyes are shining in the dim light. “A part of me always will,” he says softly.

 

And God. She understands that part, at least. Because she feels it, too. The piece of her heart that’s permanently missing from inside her because it’s been living in Archie for the last four years. The piece that going to live in Archie for the rest of her life.

 

She shrugs helplessly. She feels like the eye of a hurricane, panicky and calm. “I know,” she whispers finally.

 

He looks across the couch at her like she’s wrecked him. “What do we do?” he asks, his voice choked.

 

She feels her own eyes filling up with tears, and as the first one slips down her cheek, she says, “I don’t know.” She shakes her head. “I have no idea.”

 

After one long second, Reggie opens his arms. Veronica waits a beat before she crawls across the couch and curls into his side, his warm embrace wrapping around her. Her tears dampen his shirt and his tears dampen her hair as they sit there, a knowing in their bones and skin and hearts that the life they thought they were going to share is over.

…

 

In the end they decide they want to go to the party, that staying in and sulking and feeling like shit all night isn’t what they want on their agendas. “I’m not going to drink tonight,” Reggie had sworn before they left the penthouse. “So I can drive us home sober.”

 

Veronica had nodded at that and gotten into the car with him, the drive down to Sweetwater Circle and the wait to find parking among Archie’s hundreds of guests giving Veronica plenty of time to think.

 

She doesn’t know what she wants, really. She doesn’t know what Reggie wants. All she knows is that she’s loved him for four years and that even though a part of her heart lives with Archie, there’s another part that belongs just to Reggie, a place carved out just for him. The ways they’ve managed to hurt each other this summer can’t be measured, but she knows that the last thing she wants is for them to cut each other out of their lives forever, to become scorned and shun each other and throw away what she knows matters most. She can only pray Reggie feels the same way. She can feel that her own heartbreak is closer than she’d like, but the more she thinks about it, the more imminent it feels.

 

So she tries not to think about it.

 

Inside the mansion, the ballroom is unrecognizable from last night; Veronica can’t really believe this is the same room where she danced to piano classics with Archie less than a day ago. This party is just as magnificent and impressive as the first one she came to, but she has a hard time appreciating it, she and Reggie winding away from each other and entering separate worlds, promising to meet up again at the end of the night. 

 

She wanders out by the pool for awhile, more memories from last night rushing back, as if she’d forgotten them. Archie splashing her as she paddled around ruining his expensive shirt in the chlorine. Archie trailing his lips against her neck in his kitchen right before their giant fight. She feels her blood pressure rise just thinking about it, purposefully pushing it out of her mind.

 

Instead of dwelling on it, Veronica peers around at the nearby partygoers. Most of them are unfamiliar and seem pretty loud and immature, but she considers walking over and introducing herself, being sociable and maybe finding something lighthearted or funny to talk about. She’s sick of every conversation she has being some deep philosophical unburdening. In the end, the idea of talking to them seems pretty unbearable, so instead she reaches into a cooler and takes out a can of beer that she knows she doesn’t even like and pops the top, taking a fizzing sip and wrinkling her nose up. She stares over at the light shining out from Jughead’s small house and wonders if she could orchestrate a quick escape and go hang out with him.

 

She doesn’t do that. She just walks. Past the deck gate and down a random flight of stairs, onto the grass and around a giant ceramic sculpture of a swan. She finds a lamplit pathway and ventures down it until she finds a gated arbor surrounded by flourishing trellises. She pushes the gate open, curious, and steps inside to find a sprawling, cool green garden. And sitting right in the middle of that illustrious venue, on one of the woven white benches, is Archie.

 

He looks up when he hears her open the gate, surprised, but recovers fairly quickly. “Ronnie,” he smirks. “Did you  _ follow _ me?”

 

The sight of him makes her forget her worries for a second, his easy smile and how happy he looks to see her. Regardless of the absolute demolition their night together caused, for one insane moment Veronica is just bone grindingly glad. “Hi,” she says, walking over to sit down beside him. “And no, of course not. Just fate doing its thing again, I guess,” she teases.

 

He smiles, looking at her a little closer. “How’s it going?” he asks quietly.

 

“Oh, you know,” she says, trying to make her voice sound calm and steady. “Enjoying the weather,” she finishes, and immediately rolls her eyes at herself.  _ Enjoying the weather? _ Where are they, the courtyard of their nursing home? She gestures around to the plants and flowers. “This place is pretty. I didn’t know you had gardens.”

 

Archie shrugs. “Hired a landscaper,” he says by way of explanation. Then, “You okay?”

 

She shrugs, looking down at the soft blades of grass beneath her heels. It smells like florals and nighttime out here. Above them, there are millions of stars shining bright and steady and unchanging. She’s not sure how much she should tell him about what happened with Reggie.

 

She won’t go as far as to say their relationship went the way of the dinosaurs tonight in her living room; but they did extricate themselves from each other’s presence the moment they arrived here with a totality so breathtakingly neat it made Veronica wonder if they’d even driven down here together at all. If a stranger were to look at she and Reggie right now, they’d think they’d never even met. But that’s far from true, Veronica knows. And if right now it’s making her want to scream like her heart has been ripped right out of her chest, well, it’s nobody’s business but her own.

 

“Hey,” Archie says, nudging her shoulder with his own. He looks at her with concern. “Are you okay?” he repeats. “Ronnie?”

 

She looks up at him, and suddenly she feels so, so heavy. “I think it’s over,” she whispers.

 

Archie takes a moment to process that. Then he blinks, recovering, and quietly says, “I’m sorry.” He stares at her, unmoving, like he’s waiting for her to make the first move. Like he’s waiting for her to tell him what to do.

 

“You are?” she asks quietly.

 

“Yeah,” she says, his expression softening. “Because you look so sad right now. I’m sorry. I really, really am.”

 

Veronica sighs deeply, and when he hugs her, she breathes in deep gulps of the cold air, her head against his chest. “I don’t know how to feel right now,” she says.

 

“You don’t have to,” he tells her simply, one hand rubbing slow circles on her back.

 

She sniffles a little. “It hurts,” she whispers, the closest she’s allowed herself to admitting her feelings, and she feels Archie’s arms tighten around her in a movement that is so deeply reassuring it sort of makes her feel like her heart is growing wings instead of breaking. She pushes out another breath and rests her forehead on his shoulder.

 

“Yo, V?” says a deep voice in the darkness, pushing the gate to the garden open, then: “ _ Whoa _ . Sorry.”

 

Veronica pulls back and blinks at a kid in a blue hoodie who she vaguely recognizes as one of Reggie’s old high school friends, though she isn’t entirely sure which one. Honestly they all kind of look the same to her. “I -- um.” She can feel herself blushing; she tucks her messy hair behind her ears. “Yeah?”

 

“Sorry,” the kid repeats, holding his hands up in mock surrender and grinning a twisty, unpleasant grin. “Didn’t realize you were busy.”

 

She huffs a quiet sound out, irritated, and rolls her eyes. 

 

“Did you need something?” Archie asks. Veronica has no idea how this kid knew where to find her.

 

“I mean, I don’t,” he says, still looking at them in a way Veronica doesn’t appreciate. “But your boyfriend’s puking all over himself in the backyard.”

 

Veronica pulls back like someone slapped her. “Reggie?”

 

High School Bro nods. “He told me to come get you, yeah.”

 

“Because he’s  _ drunk _ ?” Ugh, Veronica is going to murder him. She turns to Archie. “He told me he wasn’t going to drink tonight.”

 

“He’s pretty fucked up,” High School Bro puts in helpfully. Veronica grimaces.

 

Archie looks unconvinced, but he nods. “Okay,” he says, wiping his hands on those immaculate suit pants. “You should probably go check on him, then.”

 

“Okay.” Veronica blows out a sigh and gets to her feet, a little unsteady even though she only had two sips of beer. Her limbs are heavy and sluggish and warm. “Where is he?”

 

She finds Reggie at the far side of the back lawn close to Jughead’s house, slumped against a boxwood hedge that’s swallowing him in its branches. “This is not the way to prove to me you’re fit to drive home, dude,” she says, peering down at him in irritation. She smells, and then sees, the puddle of vomit a few feet away. “Reggie,” she says. “Seriously? Again?”

 

Reggie doesn’t answer for a moment, his eyes mostly closed. Sprawled on the grass like this, he looks even bigger and taller than normal, like some kind of fallen giant from a fairy tale. He blinks at her, not quite focusing. Trying again. Finally, “It’s you,” he says, reaching his fingers up toward her face.

 

“Yeah,” she says, taking her hand in his. “It’s me.” She looks at him more closely, squatting down on the damp grass beside him to look into his eyes. Veronica frowns. She’s seen Reggie drunk before. This... does not seem like that. His gaze is still oddly unseeing; his face is weirdly, waxily pale.

 

“Reg,” she says again. “Hey. Listen to me, how much did you drink?”

 

“I didn’t drink,” he mumbles.

 

“Reggie, this is not the time to lie to me--”

 

“I  _ didn’t _ ,” he insists, and this time he sounds and looks like he’s getting upset, worked up. “Or I did, okay, but only one beer.” He lists to the side a little bit, his eyelids fluttering. “Got hit.”

 

“You got  _ hit _ ?” Veronica’s heart skips like a scratched record. “When?”

 

“At the game,” he says vaguely, and closes his eyes again.

 

_ What game? _ Veronica is about to ask, and then, “Oh, shit, yeah, he did,” puts in High School Bro, who Veronica realizes abruptly is still standing right behind her. “I hadn’t even thought of that. He got his fucking clock cleaned this afternoon when we were playing baseball at River Bend, it’s true.”

 

“And nobody thought that maybe he should go to the  _ doctor _ ?” Veronica screeches. “Reggie,” she says, grabbing his arm and shaking; Reggie makes a quiet groaning sound, but doesn’t open his eyes.  _ “Reggie.” _ Shit, she’s scared now. She wants her parents. She wants literally any actual adult.

 

She turns to High School Bro, who’s still hulking behind her with his hands in the pocket of his hoodie, useless as a dead tree. “I’m calling 911,” she says. “Tell Archie he has five minutes to get everybody out of here if he doesn’t want the cops to crash his party.”

 

“Damn,” High School Bro says. For a second she thinks he’s going to argue with her, but in the end he looks over her shoulder at Reggie and nods. “Yeah, fair. Okay.”

 

The paramedics show up in a ghoulish carnival of lights and sirens, terse and efficient and wholly unimpressed. “It’s not alcohol poisoning,” Veronica tries to explain to them, trotting along beside them as they wheel Reggie on a stretcher across the bumpy cobblestone driveway; it feels very important that they know this, that they realize he isn’t just some dumb drunk kid. “He was playing baseball, he got hit.”

 

“Who are you?” asks one of the EMTs distractedly.

 

She takes a deep breath, then hops up into the back of the ambulance before anyone can stop her. “I’m his fiancee,” she says.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friends, note that the rating for this story has changed, so if you don't want to read any smut, maybe skip the last part of this chapter.

Veronica sits in a padded vinyl chair in the bright, chilly hospital corridor, watching CNN on mute above the nurses’ station and nervously clicking her phone on and off. She’d been in this same hospital so many years ago, when Betty’s dad shot Archie’s dad fatally, although that time her mom had been here too, calmly reassuring them all that everything was going to be fine. Tonight, Veronica is on her own. It occurs to her to wonder if this is what growing up means, to continuously find yourself in situations that you don’t feel remotely prepared to handle.

 

The paramedics had whisked Reggie away when they’d arrived, and Veronica glances down the empty corridor now, searching for any sign of life and finding none except for a bored looking intern sipping coffee and flipping through a chart. She rubs her arms against the goose bumps that have sprung up there, wrinkling her nose at the smell of Lysol and antiseptic.

 

“Veronica?”

 

Veronica looks up sharply. Reggie’s mom, Melinda, is coming fast down the hallway, dark hair waving like a flag in her wake. Other than their trip to Albany last fall, she doesn’t know Reggie’s mom very well; she hasn’t spent a ton of time at her house, but the few times Veronica has gone over there since they’ve been back in Riverdale Melinda has always been working, poised and stoic and confident and focused. Not when she hugged her son, though -- every time she saw Reggie, her harder outer shell would melt away and it was more than obvious to Veronica how much she loved him.

 

Tonight Melinda looks nicer than normal, a pinkish lipstick slicked over her mouth and skinny heeled boots instead of her usual professional work attire. Veronica thinks of what Reggie always tells his mom, about how it might be good for her to try to meet someone, wonders if possibly she’d been out on a date. “Where is he?” Melinda asks, breathless.

 

“They took him for a CAT scan,” Veronica explains, feeling like she’s reciting lines from one of the grisly medical dramas that are always on TV. “I guess he got hit pretty hard playing football today.”

 

“Shit. _Shit_.” Melinda tugs at the ends of her hair in a vaguely alarming fashion. Then she shakes her head. “Okay,” she says. “Wait here, all right? I’ll find out where he is.”

 

Melinda goes over to the admitting desk and speaks in urgent tones to the nurse there, returning a minute later looking marginally calmer. Veronica is expecting her to take charge like her own mom would have, maybe even to send her home, but instead she holds her hand out for Veronica’s like a little kid afraid to go to the bathroom by herself. “Come on, Veronica,” she says. “They said you can go back with me.”

Reggie is lying in bed in a hospital gown, plastic ID bracelet looped around his wrist and the skin around his eyes turns bruised and bluish. For a second he doesn’t seem like anybody Veronica actually knows.

 

“Hey, baby,” Melinda says, her voice breaking a bit as she drops her purse on the chair and hurries across the room to the bedside. “Hey, love.”

 

“I’m fine,” Reggie says. “I promise. Oh god, Mom, don’t cry.”

 

“I’m not,” Melinda says, although she definitely is, her expression wet and wobbly. Veronica thinks again of her own mom, of how calm and unflappable she’d been when Fred was here. It’s unnerving, the idea of needing to comfort a parent. It upsets the natural order of things.

 

Veronica hangs back in the doorway as Melinda fusses, adjusting Reggie’s pillows and peppering him with questions. She straightens up, sniffling, just as the doctor comes in, a tall woman with her hair pulled into a knot on top of her head.

 

“Reggie Mantle,” she says, looking down at the scans in front of her, “this is a heck of a concussion you’ve got here.”

 

“I’ve got a heck of a hard head,” Reggie says, smiling winningly.

 

The doctor doesn’t smile back. “It’s not a joke, actually,” she tells him, looking unimpressed. “We take traumatic brain injuries very seriously in athletes. I understand you had a concussion last year, as well?”

 

“Just a mild one,” Melinda puts in.

 

“I was fine, really,” Reggie says. “It was the very beginning of my senior year in _college_ , it wasn’t a big deal.”

 

“Mild or not, repeated concussions over time can cause long term neurological problems,” the doctor continues. “Memory loss, depression, changes in your mood and personality, inability to perform academically. In very rare cases, concussions can be catastrophic.”

 

Veronica isn’t entirely sure what the doctor means by _catastrophic_ , but she doesn’t think she wants to find out.

 

“I’m not going to tell you you can’t play football, Reggie,” the doctor says. “But I am telling you this is something we need to watch very carefully. Do you understand?”

 

“Yes ma’am,” Reggie says, polite as a church mouse. “I understand.”

 

Melinda lets a breath out once she’s gone. “She told us, huh, baby?” she asks him, pushing Reggie’s hair off his forehead.

 

“I’m _fine_ ,” Reggie promises, taking her hand in his instead.

 

Veronica waits for Melinda to contradict him, to tell him this is serious -- shit, to tell him he can’t play _sports_ anymore, even though he’s grown -- but instead she just gets to her feet. “I need to go ask the doctor some more questions,” she says. “Will you kids be all right here for a second?”

 

Veronica nods. “Sure thing,” she says, and Reggie looks up at her; for the first time, he seems to notice that she’s here. When Melinda is gone, they stare at each other for a moment. Veronica has no idea what to say.

 

“You let them cut my shirt off?” Reggie asks, sounding bewildered, and just like that he’s himself again; Veronica exhales. “Why did they have to cut my shirt off?”

 

“I don’t know,” she says, taken aback. “I didn’t really ask.” She looks at him for another minute, still hovering near the doorway. “How you feeling?” she asks.

 

“Like shit,” he says. “Don’t tell my mom.”

 

Veronica rolls her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me you busted your brain?”

 

Reggie shakes his head, then immediately winces. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

 

“Oh, really?” Veronica asks, gesturing around them. “Because I gotta tell you, it kind of seems like a big deal.”

 

“Yeah, because you freaked out and called the National Guard,” he says irritably. “I would have been fine if you had just taken me home. Or to a hotel room, whichever you prefer.”

 

“Because I--” He’s _pissed_ at her, Veronica realizes. Abruptly, she wants to smash his head in herself. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” she snaps. “I’m not going to have that argument with you. You scared the shit out of me, do you know that? I thought you were going to _die_.”

 

Her voice does a weird, squeaky thing on that last word, the fear hot and sharp and immediate. She hadn’t felt any standard issue panic when it was actually happening, on the phone with the 911 operator or riding in the ambulance; now, though, it’s like some kind of impermeable shield has sprung a leak, all of it rushing in at once. When she looks down at her hands, they’re shaking.

 

“Okay,” Reggie says, letting out a sigh and leaning back against the pillows. “I’m sorry. You’re right, I should have said something. I was going to mention it at least, but then you were so sad all night.”

 

“I wasn’t sad,” Veronica says, coming into the room and sitting down in the chair by the bedside. “I mean, I _was_ , but I was also kind of happy.”

 

Reggie looks at her like she’s speaking German. “V,” he says. “I have a fucking concussion. You gotta make more sense than that.”

 

That makes her laugh, but then it’s like the laugh jangles something loose in her and for a second she feels, horrifyingly, like she might be about to cry. Veronica straightens her spine, swallows savagely. She’s tired. A lot of different things have happened tonight.

 

“The stuff we talked about earlier,” she explains finally, picking at a loose seam on the handle of her purse. “About Josie and Archie,” she breaks off, waving her hand vaguely. God, she hates talking about this. It’s so profoundly gross.

 

But Reggie presses. “What about it?” he asks. “Veronica. What else?”

 

“It just feels like… a relief, kind of. To have finally admitted it to each other. Even though it means we can’t… be together anymore,” she says carefully, though in truth she hadn’t articulated it to herself in quite those words before now. She blushes a little at the knowledge that she is, unequivocally, right.

 

“Being in love with someone else,” Reggie says slowly, “It doesn’t make me love you any less.”

 

Veronica thinks of kissing Archie on the counter of his kitchen. She thinks of the very first day she and Reggie had met. She thinks of the sheer improbability of being here in this hospital room with him, the incredible luckiness of it. “You’re my best friend,” she blurts.

 

Reggie looks at her for half a second, unreadable. Then he nods, and it’s like he’s agreeing to something she hadn’t asked out loud. “Yeah,” he says, clearing his throat a little. “You’re my best friend.” He glances down at his hands then, shyer than she’s ever seen him. “Sorry I messed up your good time,” he says.

 

“What, at the party?” Veronica shakes her head. “No, you didn’t.”

 

Reggie smiles ruefully. “I don’t know about that,” he says. Then, off her questioning expression: “I kind of saw you,” he admitted. “With Archie in that garden.”

 

Veronica feels some kind of trapdoor open inside her chest. “With Archie?” she echoes.

 

“Yeah,” Reggie nods. “I wasn’t trying to be a creep, I was just -- I was looking for you, and, you know. I found you.”

 

“Oh,” Veronica says, feeling her face flush. “Yeah.”

 

“We can talk about that stuff, you know,” Reggie tells her.

 

Veronica huffs. “Oh my god, stop. Don’t be corny.”

 

“How is that corny? I literally just told you you’re my best friend, you fucking maniac.”

 

“Okay, I know, I just--” Veronica breaks off. “Okay.”

 

Reggie makes a goofy face. _“Okay.”_

 

Veronica fusses with the zipper on her bag for another moment. “You can talk to me about any of it, too,” she tells him.

 

He looks thoughtful for a second, then says, “There’s one thing you can tell me, I guess.”

 

“Name it.”

 

“All right.” He sits up a little straighter in the hospital bed, settling in. “Can you help me figure out how to get Josie’s number?”

 

…

 

Walking down the corridors of the hospital that night, Veronica feels lighter than she has in weeks, like some invisible shackle was just cut. The doctors are keeping Reggie in the hospital overnight to monitor him, but ultimately, he’s okay, and what’s more: _they’re_ okay. They’re not getting married. They’re not doing anything. They’re just friends now, best friends, and something about that idea makes every part of Veronica breathe out in relief. This is how it’s supposed to be. This is it.

 

She’s only surprised for a moment when she walks out into the waiting room and finds Archie sitting in one of the plastic chairs, dozing off. “Hey,” she says, watches him open his eyes and find hers.

 

“Hey,” he says, getting to his feet. He looks at her in anticipation and shifts his weight a little nervously. “How’s Reggie?”

 

“Fine,” Veronica assures him. “He’s fine. He’s staying here tonight and then he’s going to move in with his mom,” she says, and looks at him for a long moment, like she’s trying to tell him something she’s not even quite sure about.

 

He stares back, and after a moment, he smiles a little and looks down, electricity diminishing only marginally. Then he nods. “Well I’m glad everyone’s okay,” he says, and nods toward the exit. “I saw Smithers waiting outside.”

 

Veronica smiles a tiny bit. “Goodnight, Archie,” she says quietly.

 

He looks at her for another long moment, stretching out infinitely. “Goodnight, Ronnie,” he replies.

 

…

 

Veronica is almost asleep, that foggy in-between that’s not quite dreaming, when her phone buzzes loudly on the nightstand: _You home?_ Archie wants to know.

 

She pushes her hair out of her face, sits up on the mattress. _Yeah_ , she keys in, trying to ignore the dark thrill in her stomach that tells her this can’t possibly lead to anything good. _Where are you?_

 

_Outside._

 

Well.

 

Her heart starts up a skittering pace in her chest, a dormant and all at once familiar pounding that used to take up residence inside her on the late nights when she would sneak Archie into her bedroom when they were teenagers. She’s alone in the penthouse now, no threat of parents to catch them, but still she holds her breath as she slips out of bed.

 

She creeps into the living room and lets him in through the front door wordlessly, their eyes locking in the dark as if to say _there you are_. Her breath is shaky already, her legs trembling and her body waiting in anticipation, like she’s known for a long time that this was coming, something inescapable rumbling towards them. Everything feels inevitable somehow, an ending that’s already been written.

 

He silently reaches out for her and she takes hold of his warm hand, leading him to her bedroom. He’s shaking, too. As soon as the door’s shut, he presses her up against it and then there’s the connection of their lips, his tongue between them and his hands framing her jaw entirely. She curls her fingers into his hair to keep him there, every inch of her skin on fire. This is what she’s been waiting for all summer, and she swears she can hear the blood rushing through her veins. He keeps kissing her but his hands trail down the sides of her body, running over her ribcage and down to her waist until he gets to the hem of her shirt, fingers slipping quickly beneath the fabric and lifting it off of her with a barely audible motion that breaks the kiss for half a second. In the moment she gets to look at him before his lips are back on hers, she can see that his pupils are blown, that his skin is heating up. She never turned a light on and it’s dark in here, nothing but a silver puddle of moonlight on the floor and the feeling of his warm mouth as he draws away to set his lips to her jaw, sends them wandering over her collarbone, hands reaching behind her to undo the clasp on her bra as he turns her around and starts walking her backwards toward the bed, teeth scraping over the skin of her neck.

 

They fall onto the mattress, a tangle of arms and ankles. Still neither one of them has said a single word. His weight presses her down into the sheets for half a second, mouth pressing clumsily against hers again, one hand gripping her jaw and tilting her chin up before he’s gone, sitting up to take his shirt off, his jeans hitting the floor somewhere off to the side. Her chest heaves as she watches him, pulse racing and every nerve in her body alert and awake, aching for the heat of his skin on hers. His fingers hook into the elastic of the dark silky shorts she went to bed in, pulling her bottoms down her legs before he finally comes back to her, his weight pressing against her hips and his breath desperate and hot against her throat, down to her sternum and finally, _finally_ , his lips trail over the swell of one breast. Since the moment he got here, everything has felt quick, dominoes toppling over each other, but now he slows down, his touch gentle. His thumb just barely brushes over her nipple as he works to leave marks on her tender skin, and her body startles as she bites back a moan.

 

“Archie, _fuck_ ,” she whispers, and his eyes drift up to hers, amusement flickering in the dark, like he can tell he’s getting her worked up even though he’s barely touching her and he’s pleased with himself.

 

He drags his mouth toward her nipple and she watches as his tongue darts out to wet his lips. Then he licks his way over the peak and pulls her into his mouth, his hand drifting up to tease her other breast and one knee easing right between her legs. Instinctively her hand flies up to her mouth and clamps down hard, trying to quiet her own moans.

 

He releases her nipple a few seconds later and then reaches up and takes her hand in his, lacing their fingers together and kissing her, swallowing her moans as his knee brushes against her panties again. Her free hand drifts down to palm his erection through his boxers, circling the length of it and now it’s his turn to groan, his lips coming away swollen and his hips lurching forward involuntarily, adding more friction between her thighs that makes her cry out with him, their moans and their breath mixing together in the otherwise quiet room. She pushes the boxers off of him and nudges them down his legs with her feet while her hand wraps around him again.

 

“Jesus fuck, Ronnie,” he rasps out, voice hoarse. “Stop,” he says. “I want to--” the rest of his words are cut off as she gets a hand around the back of his neck and pulls him down to kiss her again, hard, but she does remove her hand slowly, understands why he doesn’t want to finish this way.

 

He pulls away from her and finally starts traversing a path down her body with his lips until he reaches the hem of her panties. “Will you let me?” His cheek scrapes against her inner thigh, gentle. “Will you let me do this?” he asks.

 

“Uh-huh,” she says, more of a gasp than anything. She reaches down and scratches her short nails through his hair. She feels the warmth of his breath over her panties, and nerves are firing all over her body, a primal desire that makes her hips buck toward his mouth without warning, muscles clenching in anticipation.

 

He murmurs something that sounds suspiciously like, _“Eager, hm?”_ but she doesn’t have time to get annoyed that he can be cocky after all this time because then he’s pulling the soaked strip of fabric down her legs and pushing one of her knees back, his tongue parting her folds and licking into her and making her _whimper_.

 

“Archie,” she pleads, her hands making damp fists in the sheets. She starts arching into his mouth and feels his free hand gripping her hips to keep her grounded on the mattress as his tongue persists, his lips wrapping around her clit and her mouth opening in a silent gasp. It feels like her bones have come apart and only her skin is keeping them from flying away entirely.

 

“Come up here,” she manages, pulling at his shoulders until he listens. She’s shaking everywhere, needing something to hang on to. She thinks her nails are digging into his skin. “Come here.”

 

Archie crawls up her body, presses his mouth against hers, and she can feel his erection between her legs, and the pressure is almost unbearable. “Are we doing this?” he asks her quietly, and she thinks of four years ago, of the way it was all meant to happen before everything fell apart. “Ronnie. Are we--?”

 

“Yeah,” she says, nodding into his shoulder. Archie exhales in what sounds like pure relief to her, like he thought she was going to send him away, and then she pushes his shoulders back so he’ll let her flip them, and _yes_ , this is how she remembers it, him underneath her and her rocking her hips against him and--

 

“Ronnie, _please_ ,” he shudders as she hovers over him, and that’s all it takes for her to let him flip them again and then sink into her as she hits the pillows, both of them moaning deep in their throats as they adjust, as their bodies melt together, muscle memory or something more important than that.

 

He starts moving his hips then, and she does her part by rocking up against him in sync, and she never let herself realize just how much she missed this, his features twisted in pleasure, sweat coating his skin and the sight of him disappearing inside her over and over and over again. He reaches down for her hips to pull her up against him harder and it makes her cry out, his tip brushing against something solid inside her. She lets him set the pace and his thrusts start speeding up and she knows he’s getting close.

 

“Come on, Archie,” she breathes out, urging him towards his end, and moments later she watches the shockwaves rolling through him as he comes, an animalistic moan escaping his throat, his fingers still gripping her hips so tight she thinks he might leave bruises.

 

She watches him and reaches down to circle her clit with her fingers as he keeps thrusting, and then she’s following right after him. She feels the intensity of her orgasm pounding through her body and there’s nothing else in the world but _this_ , the pleasure that’s overwhelming her and the white light in her vision and that look on his face, and God, she’s going to feel his name burning into her skin for days.

 

When it’s over she collapses on the bed beside him and he pulls the covers up over them, both of them trying to catch their breath. Veronica feels legitimately dizzy, euphoria and so much pleasure she could drown in it, blood roaring in her ears.

 

“Ronnie,” she hears Archie whisper, and looks over at him. He’s staring right at her like this is really important, his chest still moving up and down rapidly. “I--” he starts, and then says, “I've missed you.”

 

Her hearts skips a little and she leans over to kiss him, and this time both of them are gentle.


	15. Chapter 15

When Archie wakes up the next morning, it feels like something in the universe has shifted. It feels like the stars of some far off galaxy have aligned, or Venus is passing through Jupiter, or whatever it means in the planetary world when things are suddenly really, really good and everything seems possible.

 

He slept here all night, he notes in wonder, and more soundly than he can recall in recent history at that. He asked her the night before, as they lay side by side with their chests rising and falling in unison, if she wanted him to go -- and when her sleepy response of, “No, stay here,” fell from her lips, that was all the encouragement he needed to drift off with the warmth of her body pressed against his. He can feel her there now, beside him, and he can hear her too: the barely audible sound of her breath as she sleeps, a sound so minute that it wouldn’t even be relevant if he hadn’t spent the better part of the last four years wishing he could wake up and hear it.

 

He stays where he is, staring up at the ceiling for a few more minutes until Veronica starts to shift, turning over and stretching as she wakes. She sits up and then looks down at him, and when she sees that he’s already awake, she smiles, a little unsure. “Hi,” she says, and Archie smiles back.

 

“Hi.” He sits up beside her, and before silence has a chance to sweep in, he asks, “Do you want to go get breakfast?”

 

“Breakfast?” she repeats, and then looks around and nods at their surroundings, the morning light through the window, as if she’s acknowledging that it’s breakfast time. “Yeah,” she says, “Sure.”

 

“Great,” Archie replies. “We can go to Pop’s if you want.” He still feels nervous somehow, like he’s going to say the wrong thing, like he’s going to mess this up; whatever _this_ is.

 

But Veronica just smiles again and agrees, and Archie has to resist the urge to lean in and kiss her.

 

…

 

Veronica and Archie sit next to a window at Pop’s, some old timey tune that Veronica can’t get enough of blaring from the radio on the counter. Archie’s long fingers cut idly through his pancakes with a knife. The song’s just ended when the bell above the front door rings through the air, and Veronica hears a familiar laugh. A moment later, one of Ethel’s friends appears in the doorway -- Lizzie, if Veronica recalls correctly. Veronica sees someone coming in behind her and for a second she’s worried it’s Ethel, but instead it’s Julia on her heels. Lizzie and Julia are notorious in Veronica’s mind for helping Ethel with all the extra hell she’s been laying on Veronica’s life all summer.

 

“Oh, hey,” Julia says, her eyes flicking from Archie to Veronica and back again. “You guys are here.”

 

“Here we are,” Archie says mildly, but Veronica wonders if he can see the muscles in her arms and back and shoulders seizing up, how on edge she feels around these people, like she might have to defend herself at any moment. Also, she wonders, ridiculously, how many times these girls have walked in on this exact tableau over the course of the summer -- but with Veronica seated across the table from Reggie instead of Archie.

 

If they thinks it’s weird, though, they don’t say anything about it. In fact, Lizzie looks at Veronica and says, “I heard you talked Emme into throwing a summer staff party.” She adjusts the purse strap on her shoulder. “That was pretty cool of you.”

 

It’s not exactly _Sorry I tormented you at our place of business_ , but she’ll take what she can get. Archie clears his throat with all the subtlety of a big brass band. “Yeah,” Veronica tells her, ignoring him and smiling a little. “It should be fun.”

 

Archie and Veronica walk out not long after, the smell of coming rain wet and heavy in the air. “ _Thaaaaaat_ was something out of an alternate universe,” she says, disbelieving. “Like, in all seriousness, did I just hallucinate that whole thing?”

 

Archie shrugs. “Face it, Ronnie. You’re old news.” He grins at her, teasing.

 

“I guess so.” She smiles in wonder. Neither of them talked about anything important while they ate, nothing was awkward or heavy or weird. It felt... normal.

 

Archie’s not interested in processing the events of the morning with her, though: “So, hey,” he begins, and right away it’s clear he’s got something else entirely on his mind. “You know how crazy the party got last night with the ambulance and everything, so I figured I would just cancel the one I had planned for tonight.” Archie shrugs a little then, too casual to actually be nonchalant. “So my place will be empty if you wanted to come hang out.”

 

Veronica raises her eyebrows at him, unable to hide a grin even as her stomach’s flipping over at the notion. “I’m sorry,” she teases. “If I wanted to come hang out and do _what_ exactly?”

 

Archie shakes his head at her, all that fake coolness melting away like ice cream on a sun warmed sidewalk. “Shut up,” he mutters, smiling.

 

“No, really, tell me,” she nudges, bumping her bare ankle at his. “I want to know what exactly you were imagining we’d be using your super swanky house to _do_.”

 

Archie rolls his eyes, rubs at his jaw a little. “You’re the worst.”

 

“I know,” she tells him, still grinning. “Tell me.”

 

He changes tactics then, places one hand on her hip, gets closer. “To be alone,” he says.

 

“Oh, to be _alone_.” She pretends to consider it -- as if there’s anything left to consider at this point. She pops up onto her tiptoes to press a kiss against his mouth, gentle. “I see.”

 

...

 

Archie and Veronica get out of the car once the cab drops them off in front of his Sweetwater mansion. Veronica feels almost like she’s floating, the clouds parting for the first time today and warm sunshine spilling from the sky. She finally thinks she might be feeling happy.

 

She’s about to say something to Archie, but before she gets the chance, she sees Jughead storming out of his house, flanked by Toni and Fangs. She and Archie pause on the green lawn, and the sun seems to get more intense as the three of them get closer.

 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jughead yells, and he seems angrier than Veronica has ever seen him. He’s also staring right at Archie, but she has no idea why he’s mad at him. “You? You’re the one who’s been running drugs into the Southside?”

 

She-- _What?_

 

Veronica feels her jaw come unhinged, feels something poisonous burst open inside her. He what?

 

“Can we not do this right now?” Archie says lowly, but it’s too late -- Veronica wants an explanation.

 

“What’s going on?” she asks.

 

Jughead focuses his reply on Archie. “Why don’t you ask him?” he suggests. “And while you’re at it, why don’t you ask him what the fuck else he’s been doing, the whole time he’s been lying to us about his job?”

 

“Believe it or not, Jughead, if I hadn’t lied to you, you’d be dead for knowing too much,” Archie says coldly, like he genuinely believes he did him a favor.

 

Veronica freezes in total horror. Archie moves to shove his way past them all. Jughead grabs his arm to keep him from going, though, and just like that Archie whirls on him, his fist connecting with the side of Jughead’s face with a sick crack like something out of a movie. Toni screams. Jughead hits back. And Veronica does the only thing she can think of, the only thing she’s ever been any good at in her whole entire life:

 

She runs.

 

…

 

She barely sleeps that night, ignoring Archie’s texts asking her to let him explain. There’s nothing to explain. Jughead already called her and told her all about how the Serpents questioned the so called _private investigators_ Archie had appointed to help sniff out the drug lords running their product through the Southside. Once the questioning got physical, they cracked and admitted they weren’t actually investigators. They admitted everything. And now everyone knows.

 

And the only thing Veronica wants is to never see Archie again.

 

She drags her sad, sluggish self downstairs for a walk the next morning, the fog rolling off the river like clouds of milky chowder. She’s barely made it out the door when she freezes.

 

It’s not eggs this time, coating her parents’ penthouse all slick and sludge-slimy.

 

It’s toilet paper.

 

Toilet paper that got rained on overnight.

 

She sits right down on the lawn when she sees it, rolls upon rolls of super-absorbent two-ply soaked through and clinging to the shingles and shutters and gingerbread scrollwork in mushy, sodden clumps. It’s clogging all the gutters. It’s hanging from the trees.

 

“Well,” a voice says, and Veronica looks up to find Betty, sipping her coffee; she’s standing with car keys in her hand and came closer when she heard Veronica’s laughter, a deranged cackle that didn’t sound anything like her normal laugh. She sobs once as Betty uses the toe of her shoe and nudges a clump of toilet paper on the ground to investigate, then pulls it together. The wet grass is seeping through her dress. “You have to give Ethel points for narrative consistency, I suppose.”

 

 _“Betty,”_ she snaps, and this time Betty smiles softly and offers a hand to help her up. “I’ll call the maintenance guy,” Veronica tells her miserably. “I’ll call the maintenance guy to fix it this time. I give up.”

 

Betty looks at her with compassion, her slim hands surprisingly strong. “You know what you gotta decide when you’re a writer?” she asks when Veronica’s standing, damp green grass sticking to the backs of her legs.

 

“Whether or not to give it up so you can run in the Olympics instead?” she replies. It’s an instinct, but not a hostile one, and Betty can tell. She rolls her eyes, but kindly, still holding on to both her hands.

 

“Which stories to tie up at the ending, V,” she tells her. “And which ones you have to let go.”

 

Veronica looks at her for a moment, at this girl she met seven years ago. Who grew apart from her and came back and just lifted her off the ground. “Can I ask you something?” Veronica begins, feeling stupid and embarrassed but also like this is a vital piece of information, something she should have known long before today. “What’s your favorite book?”

 

Betty looks surprised -- that she’s asking, Veronica guesses, or maybe that she cares. “My favorite -- Beloved by Toni Morrison, I guess. I like Beloved.”

 

Veronica nods slowly. “Beloved,” she repeats, like it’s a word she’s never heard before. “Okay.”

 

…

 

After she declines to go out for breakfast with Betty and thanks her for coming to check up on her, Veronica hauls herself out for a walk, a blessedly solitary loop along the river. A cool breeze is blowing, the first one she’s felt all summer, it seems. She rounds a copse of trees and stops short where she’s standing -- a sleek black car is coming down the road in her direction, gleaming in the mid summer sun.

 

For a second, this incredibly strange, incredibly _real_ fear flickers through her, this cold knowledge that she’s all by herself out here. And of course in her head she knows Archie would never physically hurt her -- the very thought of that is insane -- but she _doesn’t_ know that for sure about any of the people he works with, runs drugs with -- people who might think she knows too much, as Archie put it -- and people do crazy things to avoid losing their business and livelihood. She doesn’t know if she was always the kind of person whose first instinct is to run, or if this summer has made her that way. It’s not a quality she likes in herself.

 

In any event, it’s not a stranger or a coven of drug dealers behind the wheel, waiting to hock something from the window or jump out and beat her up.

 

It’s Reggie.

 

“Thought that was you,” he says, slowing to a stop where she’s hovering frozen and stupid, peering at her through the passenger side window. His black hair is in its usual style, pushed back off his face. “You wanna hop in, I’ll drive you home?”

 

That would kind of defeat the purpose of her walk, on top of which it feels like she’s pretty much hit her quota of boy time for one summer, but it doesn’t exactly seem as if he’s asking. “Um... sure,” she hears herself tell him, opening the passenger door and sliding into the seat. She can smell the sweat clinging to her skin. “Thanks.”

 

“No problem,” Reggie says as they head back around the river in the direction that she came from. They ride in silence for a moment, just the crackle of the oldies station he loves. “Just a few more weeks here, _hm_?” he asks, pausing for the traffic light at the intersection of the river road and Route 4. “I’m driving back to New York next week.”

 

“You are?” Veronica asks vaguely -- it feels weird to the point of distracting to be in the car with him, to wonder what he’s heard and thinks and feels. “Your job doesn’t start until Fall.”

 

“Josie’s coming with me,” he informs her. “She’s going to help me look for an apartment so I’ll be ready when the time comes.”

 

Neither of them says anything after that, this echoing silence that feels like it stretches on for days. The sun bounces off the wide black dashboard. Reggie speaks first. “Listen, V,” he says, sighing a little. “I don’t know everything about what Archie’s been involved in. I don’t want to know everything. But honestly--” he breaks off. “Honestly, V, it’s not your job to fix it or wait here in this dead end town to see it through. You were always happier in New York. You don’t seem happy now.”

 

“I--” she has absolutely no idea how to respond to that; it’s not a question. She feels like the top of her head’s been blown off. “I’m okay,” she tells him finally, because it seems like the best answer even if it’s maybe not the truest. “I made it through.”

 

“You did,” Reggie nods. “And now you deserve to go home and be happy, Veronica.”

 

She doesn’t know what to say to that, either, exactly. It feels like he’s trying to tell her something, but she doesn’t know what. They’re approaching the Pembrooke now, the soaring stretch of building; she probably could have made it home just as fast on her own. Reggie stops at the bottom of the driveway, doesn’t bring her all the way up. “Thanks for the ride,” she says.

 

“You’re welcome,” he says, nodding. “Take care of yourself, V. Call me if you need a friend.”

 

She stands there until his taillights disappear, just watching.

 

That’s when she realizes he’s right. That’s when she realizes she needs to go.

 

…

 

She’s fully intending to skip the Inn’s summer staff party, but Emme stops her on her way out the door specifically to make sure she’s going to be there, and she doesn’t have the heart (or the courage) to tell her no. The stupid party was her idea to begin with, back when this summer seemed like it might somehow work out after all. She doesn’t want Emme’s last memory of her to be as someone who bailed.

 

As soon as she turns up poolside, though, she knows it was a mistake of epic proportions: Here are Lizzie and Julia with their feet in the water, Ethel by the food table with a different one of her accomplices. She was hoping she might be able to bring Betty for a buffer -- even texted her a frantic _SOS_ \--  but she’s busy, which means Veronica’s totally on her own. She swallows and squares her shoulders, trying not to feel like a zebra smack dab in the middle of a hungry pride of lions. She has as much right to be here as they do after all.

 

That’s what she tries to tell herself, anyway.

 

Some of the staff is playing a noisy game of Marco Polo over in the deep end, and after she says hi to Josie and the kitchen guys she watches them for a while, trying to act like she’s really interested. She fishes her phone out of her pocket, attempting to ignore an overheard snatch of conversation from Ethel’s corner that might or might not include the word _slut_ . She feels her face flush scarlet anyhow. She can feel everybody’s eyes on her like physical touches, like she’s being grabbed from all sides. _Twenty minutes_ , she promises herself firmly, going far enough to set an alarm on her phone -- like there’s any way she might miss it. _You have to stay for twenty more minutes, and then you can go._

 

She’s pouring herself a plastic cup of Diet Coke, not because she actually wants it but because at least it’s something to do, when a shove from behind jostles her forward, the sticky soda splashing all over her flip-flops: her head whips up and there’s Ethel and Julia passing by.

 

“Better watch where you’re going, V,” Ethel says, her voice more artificially sweet than the cola coating Veronica’s feet and ankles. Then, more quietly: “Skank.”

 

Veronica whirls on her then, spine straightening, drawing herself up to her full height. All at once she’s had it. Suddenly, she’s mad enough to spit blood. “You know what, Ethel?” she snaps. “Shut _up_.”

 

Ethel looks at her, surprised, stopping in the middle of the concrete. “Excuse me?”

 

“You heard me.” There’s something hot and acidic running through Veronica’s veins and it takes her a moment to realize it might be bravery, that for once -- for the first time all summer, maybe -- the urge to fight is stronger than the urge to run away. “I’m sick to death of you and everybody else acting like this town is full of perfect angels that I defiled or something. That’s not what happened. And even if my parents _did_ hurt your family, it doesn’t give you an excuse to take it out on me after all these years.” She turns to Julia: “And it’s _definitely_ not your business. So I don’t want to hear it.” Her hands are shaking, but her voice is steady and clear. “I’m done,” she says, stoney. “I’ve had enough.”

 

Ethel’s just staring at her, pink mouth gaping. Josie is staring at her, too. She focuses her attention on Julia and Lizzie, eyebrows raised in challenge: _Try it_ , she wants to tell them. _I’m not going to let you hurt me anymore_. And maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t, but in this moment Veronica feels invincible, she feels full of strength and steel.

 

She’s about to say something else when she feels her phone alarm vibrate in her pocket -- time is up, then. She’s allowed to go home. She’s not running, she knows as she sets her cup down and heads for the lobby, a quilt of silence around the pool deck that somehow doesn’t rattle her at all.

 

She’s done. And she’s walking away.

 

....

 

That night Archie doesn’t sleep, he just lays there, brain raging like a hurricane: Veronica and all of his friends and his own bad judgement, the envelope Amherst had delivered to him in the late chill of the night. The message inside told him to deny everything, that nothing could be traced back to them, that all of the heat and jail time is going fall on the lower level drug dealers.

 

_Enough._

 

He lifts his head up off the pillow, actually opens his eyes in the dark: At first it sounds like his father’s voice, then possibly his mother’s. For a moment he thinks it might be Veronica.

 

Then he realizes: It’s only himself.

 

_Enough._

 

_Enough._

  
_Enough._


End file.
